B L 

2,110 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



t UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 



ANTIQUITY 

OF 

CHRISTIANITY. 



/ 

JOHN ALBERGER, 

AUTHOR OP "MONKS. TOPES AND THEIR POLITICAL INTRIGUES." 



COPYRIGHT^} 



mm 



JSIEW YORK : 

CHARLES P. SOMEEBT, 36 DET STREET. 

1874. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18T4, 

By CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 



Testimonies — Justin Martyr — Tertullian — Melito — Origen — 
A. Saccus — St. Clement — Eusebius — Constantine — Arno- 
bius — Lactantius — St. Augustine — Faustus — Abulmerar — 
Orpheus — Mahistan — Egyptian Monuments 5 

- CHAPTER II. 

Christianity and the Church — The Slow Progress of the 
Church — The Means by which it Achieved its Victories — 
European Civilization due to the Introduction of Latin 
Pagan Works 14 

CHAPTER m. 

Anima Mundi — The Philosophy of Pythagoras — of Socrates — 
of Aristotle — of Zeno — of Epicurus — of Plato 22 

CHAPTER IV. 

Hindoo Mythology — Persian Mythology — Scandinavian My- 
thology , 27 

CHAPTER V. 

Divine Developments and Mutations, as Exhibited in the 

Christian and Pagan Mythology 33 



CHAPTER VI. 

Divine Characteristics — Saviors — Logoses — Miraculous Con- 
ception — Phenomena — Incarnations of Divinity — Alarm- 
ing Prophecies at the Birth of Infant Gods— Miraculous 
Escapes — Infant Miracles — Miraculous Voices — Divine 
Physicians— Divine Prophetic Power— Transfigurations- 
Divine Sulferings— Descent into Hell— Resurrection and 
Ascension 38 

CHAPTER VII. 
Human Sacrifices— Trinity— Demons— Hell— Conclusion 55 



ANTIQUITY OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Testimonies — Justin Martyr — Tertullian — Melito — Origen — A.Sac- 
cus — St. Clement — Eusebius — Constantine — Arnobius — Lac- 
tantius — St. Augustine — Faustus — Abulmerar — Orpheus — Ma- 
histan — Plato — Egyptian Monuments. 

The origin of Christianity is involved in so much ob- 
scurity that the most distinguished Fathers of the primi- 
tive Church explicitly declared that it had existed from 
time immemorial. 

1. Justin Martyr, our first authority on this point, 
was born in Samaria, of Grecian parents, about 90 A. 
C, and died in 165. After studying in the schools of 
Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Zeno, he was accosted 
by an angel in the disguise of an old man, who persuaded 
him to become a Christian. In an "Apology," addressed 
to Antoninus Pius, he says: 

"If, then, we hold some opinions near akin to those of 
the poets and philosophers in most repute among you, 
why are we thus unjustly hated ? For in saying that 
all things were made in this beautiful manner by God, 
what do we seem to say more than Plato ? When we 
te^tch a general conflagration, what do we teach more 
than the Stoics ? By opposing the work of men's hands, 
we concur with Meander, the comedian ; and by declar- 
ing the Logos, the first begotten of God, our Master 
Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human 
mixture, to be crucified and dead, and to have risen 
again, and ascended into heaven, we say no more in 
this than what you say of those whom you style the sons 
of Jove, For you need not be told what number of 



6 



JUSTIN MARTYR TERTULLI AN . 



sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to 
J ove. There is Mercury, Jove's interpreter, in imitation 
of the Logos, in worship among you. There is ^Escula- 
pius the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after 
that ascending into heaven. There is Bacchus torn to 
pieces, and Hercules burned to get rid of his pains. There 
is Castor and Pollux, the sons of Jove by Leda, and 
Perseus by Danse. Not to mention others, I would fain 
know why you always deify departed emperors, and have 
a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Csesar 
ascend to heaven from the funeral pile. As to the Son 
of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be no more 
than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifi- 
able on account of his wisdom, considering you have your 
Mercury in worship, under the title of the Word and 
Messenger of God. As to the objection of our Jesus 
being crucified, I say that suffering was common to all 
the aforementioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered 
another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, 
you have your Perseus to balance that; as to his curing 
the lame, the paralytic and such as were cripple from 
their birth, this is little more than w T hat you say of your 
JEsculapius." 

Again, the same Christian apologist says : " It having 
reached the Devil's ears that the prophets had foretold 
that Christ would come for the purpose of tormenting 
the wicked in fire, set the heathen poets to bring forward 
a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. 
The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to 
imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same 
character as those prodigious fables." — Ajpolog. 3. 

2. Tertullian, a Latin church father, who was born at 
Carthage in Africa, of Pagan parents, in 150 A. C, and 
who became a doctor of the church of his native city in 
195, is the next authority which we shall adduce. He 
was a priest, a teacher of rhetoric and a popular de- 
claimer. In an Apology for the Christian religion, he 
admits the existence of the doctrines of the gospel in 
Gentile literature, and in explanation says: " The 



MELITO ORIGEN . 



7 



heathens from a design of curiosity put our doctrines 
into their works." — Cap. 46, 47. 

& Melito, Bishop of Sardis in Lybia, who became a 
eunuch for Christ's sake, in an Apology addressed to 
Marcus Antoninus, in 161 A. C, a fragment of which 
is preserved by Eusebius, says: " Pious men are now 
persecuted and harassed throughout Asia, which was 
never done before, and impudent sycophants, and such 
as covet the possessions of others, taking occasion from 
the edicts, rob without fear or shame, and cease not to 
plunder those who have offended in nothing. 
For the philosophy which we profess, truly flourished 
aforetime, but having blossomed again in the great reign 
of Csesar Augustus, thy ancestor, it proved to be above 
all things ominous of good for thy kingdom. 
Retain therefore this religion, which grew as your empire 
grew, which began with Augustus, which was reverenced 
by your ancestors before all religion. Only Nero and 
Domitian, through the envy of certain malicious persons, 
were disposed to bring our doctrines into hatred." — Euseb. 
JEccl. Hist., Book IV, chap, xxvi, p. 162. 

4. Origen, born at Alexandria in 185 and died in 254, 
strongly confirms the foregoing testimony. He was one 
of the most eminent Fathers of the primitive Church. He 
studied in the Eclectic school at Alexandria, under St. 
Clement and Ammonius Saccus. He first obtained the 
position of a teacher of grammar; next that of an 
instructor of Christian converts ; and finally that of 
principal of the Academy. He adopted the allegorical 
mode of biblical interpretation, which regards the letter 
as a mystical covering of a secret sense. Philo, Josephus, 
and other ancient Hebrew scholars, as well as the author 
of Paul's epistles, had authorized by their principles and 
practice the same method. A popular tumult obliging 
him to leave Alexandria, he visited Arabia, Palestine, 
Phoenicia, Achaia, and Pome. Wherever he went he 
became the preceptor of teachers, of priests, and of 
bishops. Celsus, in his " True Logos," having alleged that 
the worship among Christians was common to the 



8 



AMMOJS'lUS SAOCUS ST. CLEMENT. 



Pagans, Origen, in a reply entitled Ad Celsus, gives the 
following explanation: "To this I answer, that since I 
have granted that some notions of good and evil are 
originally planted in the minds of men, we need not 
wonder that Heraclitus and others, whether Greeks or 
Barbarians, have acknowledged to the world that they 
held the very same notions that we mention. " — Book V. 

Again he says : " God revealed those things to them 
and whatsoever they have well spoken." — Book YI. 

5. Ammonius Saccus, the founder of the New Alex- 
andrine Eclectic School, and a renowned primitive Church 
Father, adds his testimony to our assertion in the follow- 
ing language: "All the Gentile religions, and even the 
Christian religion, are to be illustrated and explained by 
the principles of universal philosophy ; but that in order 
to this the fables of the priests are to be removed from 
Paganism; and the interpretations of priests from 
Christianity.'" — See Mosheirrfs JEccl. History, volume I, 
p. 174. 

6. St. Clement of Alexandria, born at Athens in 200, 
establishes the point in question by ample and irrefrag- 
able testimony. He traveled through Greece, Italy and 
Asia, and successively became a presbyter at Alexandria, 
the principal of the Eclectic School, a famous teacher of 
rhetoric and philosophy, a fertile and popular writer, 
and the luminary and authority of the primitive Church. 
The most important work which he has furnished man- 
kind is written in imitation of the three degrees of the 
Grecian mysteries; that is, purification, initiation and 
instruction. The first book, called Protreticus, ex- 
horts Pagans to become Christians ; the second book, 
called Paidagogos, explains Christian morals ; and the 
third book, called Stromata, instructs in general subjects. 
In the Stromata he says: "One article of faith is, that 
Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have proved 
him to be the very Logos, or universal reason, by which 
mankind were all partakers, therefore those who live by 
reason are in some sort Christians, notwithstanding they 
may have passed with you for Atheists, such as among 



EUSEBIUS. 



9 



the Greeks were Socrates, Heraclitus, and the like; such 
among the Barbarians were Abraham, Ananas, Mizeal, 
and Elias." — See Reeves" Apology, vol. I, p. 83. 

Again he writes: "All virtuous thoughts are imparted 
by divine inspiration; and that can not be evil or of evil 
origin which tends to promote good ; therefore the 
Greek philosophy is good. But God is the author of 
all good, and therefore the Greek philosophy is from 
God. It follows that the law was given to the Jews and 
philosophy to the Greeks until the advent of our Lord." 
—6 Strom. 17. 

Again he observes: "This philosophy the Pagans 
received from the fertilizing influence of the divine Logos, 
which descended at the same time on the Jews, giving 
them the law and the prophets ; and upon the Gentiles, 
giving them philosophy, like rain which falls on the 
housetop as well as on the fields.'' — 1 Strom. 7. 

Again, this learned expounder of the doctrines of the 
primitive Church, remarks: "Doth not Plato mention 
both the rivers of fire, and that profound depth of the 
earth which the Jews call Gehenna? Does he not 
prophetically mention Tartarus, Cocytus, Acheron, 
Phlegethon, rivers of fire, and certain other like places of 
punishment, which lead to correction and discipline ?' ? 

7. Eusebius, who was born in Palestine in 270 and who 
died in 340, may be adduced as another supporter of the 
same proposition. In the course of his career he became 
bishop of Caesarea, his native city, an author of distin- 
guished theological reputation, and gave to the world 
the first ecclesiastical history ever penned. While he 
admits that Christianity reveals nothing new to mankind, 
he explains the mystery upon the hypothesis that the 
Devil stole the Christian doctrines and gave them to the 
Pagan poets and philosophers. — Euseb. pfocudubio sed 
perdidi Locum. 

In his Ecclesiastical History, Book I, chap, iv, en- 
titled the " Religion announced by Christ nothing new 
or strange," he asserts that every pious person, from 
Abraham to the first of the human race, w r as a Christian ; 



10 



CONSTANTTOE. 



and hence infers "the religion delivered to us, in the 
doctrines of Christ, is not a new or strange doctrine." — 
p. 25, Key. C. F. Cruse's translation. 

In Book II, chap, xvii, pp. 66-70, of the same trans- 
lation, Eusebius gives Philo's description of the Thera- 
peutse (physicians), before the invention of the name of 
Christians, and long before the birth of Christ, who had 
churches, sacred scriptures, gospels and epistles, probably 
the same as those in the New Testament, observed the 
festival of our Savior's passion, the vigil of the great fes- 
tival, the exercises, hymns, and practices observed by 
the church in his day. 

8. He also quotes from Aurelius, a Pagan author, who 
wrote in 163 A. C, the following: "And this Mer- 
cury was plainly the word by whom all things were 
made, as Heraclitus also would say; and by Jove, the 
same whom the Barbarians affirm to have been in the 
place and dignity of a principle, and to be with God and 
to be God, by whom all things were made, and in whom 
every thing that is made has its life and being, who 
descended into a body, and by putting on flesh took the 
appearance of man, though even then he gave proofs of 
the majesty of his nature ; nay, and after his dissolution 
was deified again." — JEuseb. proeb. Evan., lib. xi, c. 19. 
See Lardner, vol. IV, p. 200. 

9. Oonstantine the Great, who was born 272 and w T ho 
died in 357, in an oration addressed to the orthodox 
clergy, which met their approval, reminds them that " the 
Erythsean Sibyl, who lived in the sixth age after the flood, 
did yet by the power of divine inspiration, prophesy of 
future matters that were to come to pass concerning God, 
by the first letters of six lines of a poem, which acrostic- 
ally make, Jesus Christus Dei Films Salvator, Crux. And 
these things came into the virgin's mind by way of proph- 
ecy." He also urges that " Virgil in his fourth eclogue, 
forty j^ears before the birth of Christ, as if inspired by the 
celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated with all the pomp 
of oriental metaphor, the return of the virgin ; the fall of 
the serpent; the approaching birth of a godlike child, the 



ARNOBIUS LACTANTIUS ST. AUGUSTINE. 11 



offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the 
guilt of human kind and govern the peaceful universe 
with the virtues of his father; the rise and appearance of 
a heavenly race, a primitive nation throughout the world; 
the gradual restoration of the innocence and felicity of the 
golden age."" — Gib. Decline, vol. II, eh. xx, p. 269. 

10. Arnobius, the elder, who became a teacher of 
rhetoric in the Nicomedean eclectic school, and three 
years afterward professed the Christian faith, wrote seven 
books of " Disputiones Adversus Gentes," in which he en- 
dorses the general sentiment expressed by the above 
quoted fathers, and says : " If Cicero's works had been 
read as they ought to have been, there would have been 
no need of Christian writers." 

11. Lactantius, an influential Latin church father, was 
born in Africa in 280 and died in 325. He was a cele- 
brated orator, a polished writer, a famous teacher of 
rhetoric, and the principal of the Nicomedean eclectic 
school. In his "Divine Institutions," he says : " If there 
had been any (among Pagans) to collect the truth, which 
was scattered among sects and individuals, into one and 
to have reduced it into a system, there w T ould, indeed, 
have been no difference between him and us." — Book II. 

12. St. Augustine, the ablest polemical writer among 
the church fathers, was born at Tagaste in Africa, and 
flourished between 354 and 403. In the progress of an 
eventful life, he successively became a Manichrean, a 
teacher of the eclectic school at Milan, the bishop of 
Hippo, the founder of nunneries and monasteries, and the 
author of numerous celebrated theological disquisitions. 
Respecting the origin of Christianity he thus enunciates 
his opinion: "In our time is the Christian religion, 
which to know and follow is the most sure and certain 
health, called according to that name, but not according 
to the thing of which it is the name ; for the thing itself, 
the same which is now called the Christian religion, 
really was known to the ancients, nor w T as wanting at any 
time even from the beginning of the human race, until the 
time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true 



1 '2 FAUSTUS A BULMEBAB ORPHEUS PLATO. 

religion, not as having been wanting in former times, 
but having in later times received a new name." — Ope/\ 
Atist., vol. I, p. 12. 

With the foregoing testimonies we beg to call the atten- 
tion of investigators to the subjoined corroborative proof. 

13. Faustus, a Manichsean bishop, addressing St. Au- 
gustine, says: "Ton have substituted your Agapae for the 
sacrifices of the Pagans ; and for their idols your martyrs 
whom yon serve with the very same honors ; you appease 
the shades of the dead with wine and feasts ; you celebrate 
the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their Calends and 
their Solstices ; and as to their manners, those you have re- 
tained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you 
from the Gentiles except you assemble apart from them." 

14. Abulmerar says: "We have in the first decade 
the sign of the virgin, following the most ancient tradi- 
tion of the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, Her- 
mes and JEsculapius, a young woman called in the Persian 
language, Seclinidos de Darzama ; in the Arabic, Adren- 
edefa — that is to say a chaste, pure, immaculate virgin, 
suckling an infant, which some nations call Jesus, but 
which we in Greek call Christ." 

15. Orpheus, B. C. 1000, says: "All things are made 
by one Godhead, with three names, and this God is all 
things." — Parkhurst Heb. Lexicon. 

16. According to Jahn Archeology, a text, book in 
theological seminaries, "Mahistan, a disciple of Zoroaster, 
believed in the immortality of the soul, in rewards and 
punishments after death, in a general resurrection, and at 
time of this resurrection that all the bad would be purged 
by fire and associated with the good." 

17. Plato, in his Commonwealth, says: " If a man per- 
fectly righteous should come upon earth, he would find 
so much opposition in the world, that he would be reviled, 
scourged and imprisoned, by such men as passed for 
pighteous, though they were extremely wicked." — Tom. II. 

18. From the Preface of a work entitled " Egyptian 
Mythology and Egyptian Christianity," written by John 



EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANITY. 



13 



Sharp and published in London in 1863, we make the 
subjoined extract : 

"The following are the principal doctrines which are 
most certainly known to be common to Egyptian Mythol- 
ogy and modern orthodoxy as distinguished from the 
religion of Jesus. They include the Trinity, the two 
natures of Christ, and the atonement by vicarious suffer- 
ing. 

"1. That the creation and government of the world is 
not the work of one simple and undivided being, but of 
one God made up of several persons. This is the doctrine 
of plurality in unity. 

" 2. That the happiness or favor of the Judge of the 
living and the dead could scarcely be hoped for either 
from his justice or his mercy, unless an atoning sacrifice 
had been paid to him on our behalf, by a divine being ; 
and that mankind, or some part of them, may hope to 
have their sins forgiven because of the merits and inter- 
cession of that being, and to be excused from punishment 
because he consented to be sacrificed for them. With 
the Egyptians there were four such chief mediators. 

" 3. That among the Gods or persons composing the 
Godhead, one, though a God, could yet suffer pain and be 
put to death. 

"4. That a God, or man, or a being half God and man, 
once lived on earth, who had been born of an earthly 
mother, but without an earthly father 

" The Egyptian day for eating sugared cakes had been 
our 20th of January, but it was in the fourth century 
changed to be kept 14 days earlier; and the sugared 
cakes of the Egyptians now mark the feast of Epiphany, 
Twelfth Night, 

" The feast of Candles, which in the times of Herodotus, 
was held in honor of the God Neith, is yet marked in 
our almanac as Candlemas day, or the purification of the 
Virgin Mary. 

" When the Roman Catholic priest shaves the crown of 
his head, it is because the Egyptian priest had done so 
before. When the English clergyman, though he preaches 



14 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 



his sermon in a woolen robe, may read the litany in no 
dress but linen, it is because linen was the clothing of 
the Egyptians. Two thousand years before the bishops 
of Rome pretended to hold the keys of heaven and earth, 
there was an Egyptian priest with the high-sounding 
title of Appointed Keeper of the twT> doors of Heaven in 
the city of Thebes." 

The above statement is illustrated by numerous en- 
gravings from Egyptian tombs, temples, and papyri. 

CHAPTER II. 

Christianity of the Church — The Slow Progress of the Church — 
The Means by which it Achieved its Victories — European Civ- 
ilization due to the Introduction of Latin Pagan Works. 

The fathers of the primitive church were of opinion 
that Christianity was a principle of doctrines and worship 
universally possessed by the pious in all ages; but that 
the church, though in reality possessing no new principle 
of either faith or practice, and differing from universal 
religion in nothing except a new nomenclature for old 
gods, rites, feasts, and fasts, yet, nevertheless, was a di- 
vine institution, designed by its founder to conquer and 
annihilate all other religous organizations. In no other 
sense than that expressed by the fathers, could Justin 
Martyr, in 163, say "There exists not a people, 
whether Greek or Barbarian, or any race of men, by what- 
soever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, 
however ignorant of arts and culture, whether they dwell 
under tents, or wander about in covered wagons, among 
whom prayers are not offered up in the name of a crucified 
Jesus to the father and Creator of all things." — Dialogue 
with Typlion, p. 147. 

If the clause " Through the name of a crucified Jesus," 
be construed in the sense in which modern biblical writers 
understand that phrase, then the language of Justin was 
never applicable to Christianity. For 200 years Chris- 
tianity was confined in Egypt to the single city of Alex- 



PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL. 



15 



andria. In Arabia and Ethiopia it is not pretended to 
have been known before 380; in Abyssinia not before 
the sixth century; in Persia, China, and Hindostan, it 
has never made any deep impression ; among thousands of 
modern nations it is unknown, and among those in which 
it is known prayers are not offered up through a crucified 
Jesus, in one family out of ten. Let us examine this 
subject a little. The Goths, the first Germanic nation 
that embraced the gospel, accepted its liberal proffers of 
peace and salvation in 409 ; and by their victories and allies 
induced the Gallic Burgundians, the -African Vandals, 
the Spanish Suevians, and the Pannonian Ostrogoths, to 
adopt the same advantageous policy. For various sinis- 
ter and political reasons the Franks embraced Christian- 
ity in 496; the Britons in 580; the Saxons in 783; the 
Normans in 950; the Danes in 965 ; the Poles in 996 ; 
the Russians in 998 ; the Bohemians in 999 ; the Swiss in 
1001 ; the Norwegians in 1029 ; the Icelanders and Green- 
landers, in 1060; the Finlanders, Helsinglanders, Jampt- 
landers in 1157 ; the Gothlanders, Tauvasxlanders and 
Bothnians in 1250; the Livonians, Courlanders, Sclavo- 
nians, Semogalians, in 1260; the Coralians, Savoluxians, 
and Vibargians in 1292; the Prussians in 1283, and the 
Lithuanians in 1386. 

The church, whatever it was in its origin, soon became 
political in its motives and objects. It claimed to be a 
new and independent nation, designed to be implanted 
in the heart of other nations for subjecting them to its 
authority. It claimed to be the vicegerent of God and 
to act under his inspiration. As Hindostan acknowl- 
edged no boundary to its domain ; as Rome admitted no 
limit to its empire; as the Hebrews expected the utter- 
most parts of the earth for an inheritance; so the church, 
composed of the same human materials, notwithstanding 
its pretensions to supernatural illumination, was governed 
by the same selfish motives, actuated by the same am- 
bitious principles and practiced the same disgusting 
vices. The bishops, as spiritual princes, with a crosier 
for a scepter, established first episcopal thrones, next 



16 



MEANS OF CONVERSION. 



metropolitan thrones, and finally patriarchal thrones. 
Under the last the virulent struggle for patriarchal 
supremacy was inaugurated, disguised under a professed 
regard by the aspirant for the faith in heaven, in the 
meantime the innate secret treason of the church to politi- 
cal governments was gradually developed until it became 
partly consummated in the conspiracy which crowned 
Constantine emperor of Rome. But the machinations 
of the divine patriarchs for political supremacy over one 
another continued to distract the world with clamor and 
sedition until it rent the Christian brotherhood into two 
hostile factions — the Greek church and the Latin 
church. 

Let us illustrate the subject of our inquiry, and the 
inherent nature of the church, by briefly viewing the 
means it adopted for the conversion of Europe. By 
what means, then, did the Pope and his monks effect the 
conversion of the European barbarians I AVe answer. 
By polemical artifice, political and domestic intrigue, 
foreign intermeddling, military missionaries and the 
apostolic exterminating sword of converted but unre- 
formed kings. The missionaries were instructed in 
sacred artifice by their episcopal masters. — (See Gib. 
Decline, vol. Ill, chap, xxxviii, p. 544.) A dream, an 
omen, a vow uttered in despair, the amorous eloquence 
of a mistress, the offer of an advantageous marriage, or 
the threat of an exterminating sword, was the argument 
which demonstrated to the credulity, interest or passions 
of a prince the fallacy of the Pagan and the truth of the 
Christian religion ; but it never changed their conduct. 
Clovis, in a perilous situation incurred in an unjust war, 
having called in vain on the Pagan gods for assistance, 
invoked the god of Clotilda, his Catholic wife ; and 
victory declaring in his favor, he regarded the fact as a 
demonstration of the divine origin of Christianity, and 
not only consented to be baptized himself, but com- 
manded his nation to partake of the same blessing. 
Ethelbert, king of England, wishing to marry Bertha, 
a Catholic princess and daughter of the king of Paris, 



THE CONVERSION OF FRANCE, ENGLAND, ETC. 



17 



commenced negotiations in view of that object. Pope 
Gregory, the Great, however, in pious regard for 
Bertha's soul, interdicted the marriage, unless provisions 
were made granting Bertha the benefit of a Catholic 
priest and the privilege of erecting a chapel in England 
in which the Catholic ritual should be performed. The 
initiatory steps tor the introduction of Christianity into 
Eno-land having thus been crowned with success — the 
king subjugated to the queen, and the queen to the priests, 
as the priests were to the pope — Gregory consummated 
his artful scheme by deluging the kingdom with a 
monkish army commanded by St. Augustine, who soon 
reduced the court and the people under their authority. 
Meiczlaus I, of Poland, having married Dumbroka, a 
Catholic princess, and enabled by the splendor of her 
charms to perceive the force of Christian logic, accepted 
the gospel and was baptized. Vladimir the Great, of 
Russia, having fallen in love with Anna Romanowa, 
negotiations were instituted between the two imperial 
courts respecting the important affair, which negotiations 
resulted in an agreement that the pair should be united 
in wedlock, provided the connubial and the baptismal 
rites were celebrated at the same time. Hudwiger, queen 
of Poland, a Catholic, and Jaggalon, grand duke of 
Lithuania, a Pagan, contracted a marriage alliance, in 
which it was covenanted: that the bridegroom should be 
baptized ; that both realms should be incorporated into 
one, and that compulsory measures should be adopted to 
compel the obstinate subjects to accept the salvation of 
the gospel and the benefits of the consecrated waters of 
baptism. 

Besides this mild mode of argumentation in favor of 
the divine power of the gospel, a more demonstrative 
one, in the shape of an exterminating sword, was fre- 
quently adopted. For thirty-one years the Saxons with- 
stood the arms of Charlemagne, professedly designed for 
their conversion and salvation. Harold I, Pagan king 
of Poland, battled with distinguished heroism against 
the formidable proselyting forces of Otho I, Christian 



18 CONVERSION OF SWEDEN APOSTOLIC KINGS. 



emperor of Germany, until lie was disastrously defeated, 
when, preferring baptism to being butchered, he coldly 
submitted to its shuddering rites, and reluctantly con- 
sented to believe the gospel. Ethelbert, king of Eng- 
land, a pliant instrument of the Holy See, sent Arch- 
bishop Seigfroy to Olaus Scatkanyung, the first Swedish 
king, to win him over to the pope's interest and theology, 
and succeeded so far as to induce him and the royal family 
to partake of the blessings of the baptismal sacrament ; 
but they accepted Christ only as another name for Odin, 
and the Virgin Mary only as another name for their 
Virgin Friga. Olaus I, king of Norw T ay, receiving the 
divine light of the gospel, and the regenerating waters 
of baptism, commenced a career of ferocity and diabolism. 
Under the elevating instruction of the monks, he con- 
ceived himself ordained by providence to be the exter- 
minator of idolators; and the pope acknowledging his 
claim of being a military apostle of Christ, and that his 
divine mission conferred on him all authority necessary 
to compel the Pagans by torture and death to believe in 
the gospel, he soon convinced his subjects that death or 
Christianity was their only alternative. He then entered 
Greenland and Iceland, and compelled the inhabitants to 
submit to Christ or seal their faith in Paganism with 
their blood. St. Olaus II, instructed by the Christian 
priests in the orthodoxy of this warlike art of saving 
souls, adopted, under the sanction of Home, the same 
ferocious policy. Conceiving according to Catholic teach- 
ing that the Pagans had no right to life, property, or 
rule, he exterminated the petty heathen kings with his 
consecrated sword, seized on their possessions, annexed 
them to his own dominions and offered hecatombs of 
Pagan martyrs on the altars of their triune God. The 
Sclavians, after battling a hundred years against the logic 
of Christianity embodied in a Germanic sword, finally 
decided, that as the gospel was the only plan of salvation 
left them, they had better accept it. St. Eric, another 
apostolic Swedish king, under the approval of the Pope 
of Rome, organized a force of military missionaries, and 



APOSTOLIC KINGS. 



19 



by this means subjugated Finland, Helsingland, and 
Jamptland under the authority of Christ and himself. 
King Eric the Lisper, a royal saint, invested by papal 
authority with the sacred character of a military apostle 
of Christ, invaded Travvastland, Berger and Bothnia, 
and by the unrelenting vigor of a barbarous war, planted 
the banner of the cross over all those domains, excepting 
part of Bothnia. Prussia, invulnerable to the secret 
machinations of the Holy See, and undaunted by the 
ferocity of the military apostles of Christ, had resisted 
the proffers of salvation and heaven with such resolute 
heroism, that it threw Pope Honorius into such a parox- 
ism of rage that he publicly called Christendom to arms, 
in order to proselyte by military force the obstinate Pa- 
gans. A calamitous war ensued. The Pagans deter- 
mined to exhaust the resources of defense; the Christians, 
the means of subjugation. The arts of destruction were 
mutually applied with consummate skill ; towns were 
swept from existence; communities massacred; blood 
flowed in reeking torrents ; Pagans accepted death rather 
than baptism ; and all the havoc and horrors of which 
war is pregnant were protracted in their most terrific 
forms for fifty-six years. The carnage of the fierce con- 
flict was so enormous that, at length, it had so nearly 
depopulated the Persian territory and extinguished the 
prospect of victory against the arms and resources of 
united Christendom, that they concluded to accept the 
gospel rather than total extinction. Livonia, Courland 
and Semagalia, not having perceived the superiority of 
the gospel to Paganism, by the example, teaching and 
logic of the missionary monks, the Pope resolved to 
quicken their perceptive powers by the appliance of a 
military crusade. The order of Sacred Sword Bearers 
was hence formed under his instructions, and the army of 
Christ, so organized, entered the domains of the idolators 
and covered them with carnage and death. Berthold, 
the military bishop, at the head of the saints, perished 
sword in hand fighting the Pagans to make them believe 
in Jesus. For a hundred years this war raged with un- 



20 



MONKISH conversions. 



mitigated ferocity. The heavier armament and greater 
military resources of the Sacred Sword Bearers, at length, 
convinced the obstinate Pagans that resistance to the de- 
mands of the pope and the gospel would inevitably involve 
their nationality in extinction ; and, listening to the coun- 
sels of prudence rather than of pride and patriotism, 
they consented to believe in Jesus and be baptized. The 
duke of Lithuania, being oppressed by the Teutonic 
Knights, and proffered a crown by the Pope if he would 
believe the gospel, yielded to the admonitions of danger 
and interest. But no sooner had he been relieved 
from fear of the one, and endowed with the gift of the 
other, than he tell from grace. Having, in the mean- 
time, however, prudently made himself too formidable 
to be convinced of his error by any warlike demon- 
stration, he was permitted to indulge his Pagan proclivi- 
ties without molestation ; but in the successive vicissitudes 
of one hundred and fifty years, his kingdom becoming 
weakened by dissension and bad policy, and harassed by 
the Teutonic Knights, consented through papal overtures 
to become Christians, in order to prevent the consum- 
mation of a coalition in process of negotiation between 
the Teutonic Knights and the Sacred Sword Bearers, for 
the utter extinction of their race and nationality. 

Although the monks imposed on their Pagan converts 
the easy task of submitting to baptism, and of substituting 
in their devotions the names of the Christian deities for 
those of the pagan mythology, yet even in this accommo- 
dated form, they received Christianity with a shudder, 
coldly professed its.creed ; and reluctantly disguised their 
Pagan piety. 

The self-denial, fierce contests, and laborious toil which 
the propagandists underwent for the accomplishment of 
such an insignificant object, may, upon a cursory view, 
excite surprise. But this surprise will be weakened when 
we consider that the object was entirely political, and 
will completely vanish when we consider that the Pagan 
priests were noblemen, invested with temporal jurisdic- 
tion and enjoying princely revenues, and that the zeal 



MONKISH CONVERSIONS. 



Si 



of - monks, priests and bishops for the salvation of Pagan 
souls might receive its most powerful impulse from a 
prospect of supplanting the Pagan priesthood and suc- 
ceeding to its honors and emoluments. 

The first Germanic tribe that embraced the gospel 
was the Gothic ; and by their powerful influence the 
Burgundians, Sueve and Vandals were induced to follow 
its example. But these Barbarians embraced it under 
the form of Arianism, which denies the Son to be equal 
with the Father. This was heresy, and heresy in the 
subsequent political struggles became more odious to the 
ears of the church than either idolator or barbarian ; in 
short, she found she had by murderous crusades and the 
expenditure of enormous wealth converted the heathen 
to a blasphemous creed, and that to correct the damnable 
error she had to reconvert them. The discovery of this 
mistake by her infallible holiness, led to a long, violent 
and acrimonious controversy, which filled the church 
with confusion, the councils with disorder, the cities with 
tumult, and the nations with distraction. 

The priests who converted the Pagans to Christianity 
did not convert them to justice or humanity, but left 
them as they found them — savage in disposition, tyran- 
nical in authority, uncivilized in manners, and robbers, 
marauders and pirates in practice. Neither Christian 
nor other creeds are competent to civilize and reform 
mankind ; this can be accomplished only by a knowledge 
of the Laws of Nature, and a conformity with them. 
Yet this object, without intending it, was partly insured 
by the Catholic priests ; for by introducing the Latin 
ritual among the heathen, they necessitated in a measure 
the introduction and study of the Latin authors. If, 
therefore, the propagandists gave the name of Chris- 
tianity to the European Pagans, the Roman Pagan au- 
thors gave them letters, arts, laws, government, and civ- 
ilization. 

When w r e consider the formidable efforts of the Church 
to proselyte the heathen, and the obstinate resistance 
they excited, we are compelled to admit that, wdien Jus- 



22 



JPYTHAGOKEAN PHILOSOPHY. 



tin Martyr said no people existed in his day " among 
whom prayers were not offered up in the name of a cru- 
cified Jesus, 5 ' he either falsified or referred merely to the 
mediatorial deities common, under different names, 
among most nations. In this latter sense it is in harmony 
with his Apologies, with the concurrent testimony of the 
fathers, and with the assertion of St. Paul, that the gospel 
which he preached had been preached to every nation 
under heaven. 

OHAPTEE III. 

Anima Mundi — The Philosophy of Pythagoras — of Socrates — of 
Aristotle — of Zeno — of Epicurus — of Plato. 

That the essentials of Christianity, from immemorial 
time, more or less pervaded the moral, philosophical and 
religious world, will be strikingly brought to our mind 
by a momentary glance at the principles of the various 
systems of ancient philosophy. 

1. A prominent dogma of polytheistic philosophy was 
that the universe was animated by a soul, pervading its 
atomic particles, which gave birth to gods, men and 
the material forms and combinations of nature. This 
soul is called Anima Mundi ; but under different names 
and modifications it was invariably the supreme deity of 
civilized Pagan nations. It was the Parava (breathing 
soul) of the Hindoos ; the Nam, Nu, Nous, or Kneph, 
of the Egyptians ; the Zeivene Akerene of the Persians ; 
the Kosmos Spyke of Plato ; the Theos of the Greeks ; 
the Deus of the Latins ; The Logos of the Eclectics ; and 
the Odin, Woden, or Goden, of the Scandinavians. 

2. Pythagoras, the founder of the Italian philosoph- 
ical school, was born B. C. 584. He lived exclusively 
on vegetable diet, claimed supernatural powers, taught a 
secret as well as a public theology, gave his disciples a 
form of prayer, did nothing without the advice of God, 
and established schools on the community principle, pre- 
scribing a rigorous system of monastic discipline. Ac- 
cording to his system of philosophy matter was eternal, 



SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY, 



23 



but originally existed in a chaotic form ; the Spirit of the 
Universe is a central fire, in substance similar to light, 
diffused throughout space, indestructible and invisible, 
the internal cause of the motion of substance, by which 
its particles combine in new forms, and acquire new 
properties, and by which it has produced spirits, the 
earth and its inhabitants. Gods, demons and demigods 
were its first production ; they are endowed with ethereal 
bodies, inhabit the air, are the cause of health and sick- 
ness to animate nature and communicate to men in 
dreams a knowledge of future events. Man is formed 
with two souls ; the one sensual, the other rational ; the 
first, composed of matter and rays of the central light, 
has its seat in the heart and is mortal ; the second, an 
unalloyed spark of the central fire, has its seat in the 
brain and is immortal. The mortal soul assumes, upon 
the dissolution of its corporeal tenement, an aerial vehicle 
and ascends to the habitation of the dead, where, if pure, 
it remains in bliss ; but, if impure, returns to earth and 
animates some form of man or beast, according to the 
degree of its impurity. The earth will finally take fire, 
and its gigantic flames ascending in the air will involve 
the universe in a general and destructive conflagration. 

3. Socrates, who was born B. 0. 470, was the founder 
of the Socratic philosophical school. Interpreting the 
fables of Mythology literally, he rejected them as absurd; 
and was, perhaps, the first philosopher that regarded the 
legends of the gods as pretended historical facts. Dis- 
carding the trammels, the secret orders and mystical 
initiatory rites of the schools, he traveled from piace to 
place, teaching his philosophy in market-houses, work- 
shops and places of public resort. He conceived that 
he was inspired with divine truth by God, and ordained 
and commanded by him to teach it to mankind. He 
considered the treasures of wealth and science, in com- 
parison to divine knowledge, as less than nothing. He 
believed himself controlled by good spirits, through 
which God made known to him a revelation of his will. 
Under their direction he visited Athens and other places 



STOIC PHILOSOPHY, 



as an ambassador of God. He taught that matter and 
spirit were eternal, and have always subsisted in the form 
and condition in which they are now observed. He 
taught that Theos, the Anima Mundi, was a supreme 
spirit, omnipresent, omniscient, eternal, infinite in good- 
ness and wisdom, and the creator, preserver and ruler of 
all things ; that he has endowed man with a sensual and 
a rational soul ; that death is the transition of the virtu- 
ous to an Elysium of endless bliss, but of the vicious to 
a Tartarean lake of eternal torment ; and that at the last 
day the dead will rise from their ashes, and that the uni- 
verse will be consumed in a general conflagration. 

4. Aristotle was born B. C. 384, and became the 
founder of the Peripatetic philosophical school. He 
maintained that matter and spirit are distinct, but eter- 
nal and inseparable, and have always existed as at pres- 
ent constituted ; that Theos, the Anima Mundi, is a per- 
fect intelligence, unchangeable, eternal, indestructible, 
infinitely just, and the source of all motion ; that knowl- 
edge is derived from experience ; that the province of 
knowledge is the test of truth and probability ; that hap- 
piness originates from the practice of virtue ; that virtue 
consists in acting in accordance with the. laws of nature, 
governed by a moderation that transcends not their pre- 
scribed limits, but actuated by an energy that perfectly 
fulfills their requirements ; and that the soul, inseparable 
from the body, perishes with it. 

5. Zeno, who instituted the Stoic school of philosophy, 
was born B. C. 366. This school taught its scholars that 
spirit and matter are two eternal, material, but distinct, * 
principles ; the one an active intelligence ; the other a 
passive subject. That Theos, the Anima Mundi, is of an 
ethereal nature, and penetrates every particle of nature, 
infusing into it a rational soul, which becomes its im- 
mutable law; that it resides in and animates matter, and 
governs all things not unalterably fixed by inexorable 
fate; that the human soul is compounded of a divine 
spirit and subtile matter ; and that the will of Theos 
through man is the source of civil and moral law. He 



EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY. 



25 



taught, also, that philosophy is the method of reason- 
ing ; wisdom the knowledge of truth ; experience the 
basis of knowledge ; virtue the application of wisdom to 
conduct ; logic the method of distinguishing truth from 
falsehood; nature the standard of human perfection; 
the laws of the uni verse the source of mora! duty ; virtue 
the highest good ; vice the sole evil; living in accord- 
ance with the laws of nature our chief duty ; that actions 
are good when rational, obligatory when just, allowable 
when harmless, and criminal when in violation of con- 
science ; that happiness is internal .harmony, acquired 
by dominion over the passions, and consists in inward 
tranquillity and inflexible apathy. The moral doctrines 
and ascetic principles of the Stoics and those of the New 
Testament writers are so significantly analogous that they 
clearly indicate the source whence the latter were drawn. 

6. Epicurus, born B. C. 342, was the founder of the 
Epicurean philosophical school. This school taught that 
space and matter are infinite and eternal principles ; that 
the latter originally existed in ultimate and invisible 
atoms, which, by particular unions, formed the various 
objects of nature, and will by their separation destroy 
them. From this universal ruin a new heaven, a new 
earth, and new orders of the animal and vege.able king- 
doms will emerge, to pass through the same cycle and 
to terminate in the same destruction ; and that similar 
creations and destructions will eternally succeed one an- 
other. They taught, also, that the soul is mortal, hut 
in accordance with the universal law of nature will 
undergo an endless series of dissolutions and recompo- 
sitions. They affirmed that man is organized to obtain 
hapuiness by the practice of virtue ; that virtue consists 
in the soul acting in harmony with its laws ; and that the 
essentials of perfect happiness are, freedom from vicious 
practices, seclusion from the world, torbearance to man's 
self-love, the practice of benevolence and the temperate 
indulgence in the pleasures of sense. Conceiving the 
world to be governed by inherent, indestructible and 
unchangeable laws, they maintained that the gods live 



26 



Platonic philosophy. 



in perpetual tranquillity, unconcerned about sublunary 
affairs. 

7. Madame Dacier and others, the Christian transla- 
tors of the " Divine Dialogues of Plato," in their Intro- 
duction, speaking of the characteristics of the Platonic 
philosophy, say: "To be entirely a true philosopher is, 
to have temperance, justice and fortitude ; to avoid sens- 
ual pleasures ; to weaken as much as may be the bands 
which fasten the soul to the body ; to renounce our de- 
sires; to fear neither the shame, the reproach, nor the 
poverty we may be exposed to for the sake of righteous- 
ness and truth ; to do good to mankind, even to enemies: 
to have nothing in view but how to act well; and to this 
end renounce ourselves and everything else." 

Speaking of the creed of Platonic philosophers, they 
say : " They held that there is one God ; that we ought 
to love him, to serve him and to resemble him in holiness 
and righteousness ; that the soul is in darkness unless 
enlightened by him ; that unless God teaches us we are 
incapable of praying well ; that piety is the gift of God ; 
that we ought to be continually learning to die ; that it 
is a crime to hurt our neighbors, or revenge ourselves for 
injuries received ; that God is the sole cause of good ; 
that that love to our neighbors which proceeds from the 
love of God, as its principle, produces the sacred union 
which makes families, republics and kingdoms happy ; 
that the world is nothing but corruption ; that we ought 
to flee from it; that while we live in this world we are 
surrounded by enemies and have a continual combat to 
endure, which requires resistance without intermission 
and that we can not conquer unless God and his angels 
come and help us ; that Logos formed the world ; that 
by his knowledge we may live happy on earth, and after 
death obtain felicity ; that the soul is immortal ; that the 
dead shall rise ; that there is to be a final judgment both 
of the righteous and the wicked, when all shall appear 
with their virtues and their vices which shall be the oc- 
casion of their eternal happiness or misery. " 

Again they say : "Four hundred years before the light 



PAG AN MYTHOLOG Y . 



of the gospel illumined the world the greater portion of 
Christianity was taught by the Platonists. v 

CHAPTER IV. 

Hindoo Mythology — Persian Mythology — Scandinavian My- 
thology. 

A brief sketch of ancient Pagan mythology will estab- 
lish the existence of the fundamental principles of Chris- 
tianity in the remotest periods of antiquity. 

1. The Hindoo mythology teaches that Parava (breath- 
ing soul), the Anima Mundi, subsists in all things, and 
all things in him, he being the universe and the universe 
being him. He sleeps for ages. When he awakes to 
create he is Brahma ; when to preserve he is Yishnu ; 
and when to destroy he is Siva. Brahma first created a 
multitude of angels in hierarchal order ; but the lower 
order soon envied the higher order, and becoming malig- 
nant, declared war against them. Indra commanded the 
army of the higher order, and Rachasos that of the lower. 
Indra triumphed ; Rachasos then proposed terms of peace 
and conciliation ; but Brahma refused to accept his sub- 
mission, and hurled him and his angels down to Patala, 
the lower regions. An immense serpent moved upon 
the face of the aerial deep, upon the folds of which slept 
Vishnu canopied by its thousand heads. Reciprocal un- 
dulations being Excited between Vishnu's couch and the 
depths of space, the womb of the latter became pregnant ; 
and, in the course of time, gave birth to an egg, which 
blazed like a thousand suns.- From this egg Brahma 
sprung forth. Embodying in his nature the germ of all 
things he diffused through infinite space, in the form of 
an immense volume of light, his creative and vitalizing 
power, and impregnated it with life and matter. Water 
was the first born ; and then, by successive developments, 
countless varieties of animate and inanimate objects 
emerged into existence. Adima and Heva were the first 
human pair created. Brahma placed them on the lux- 



28 



PKUf TAN MYTHOLOGY. 



nriant isle of Ceylon, and commanded them never to quit 
their paradisiacal abode. Here they happily dwelt for 
a long period; but at length Rachasos, the evil one, 
over-persuaded Adima to endeavor to improve his con- 
dition by emigrating to a more delightful abode. For 
this want of implicit obedience to heaven, Brahma anath- 
ematized and banished him; but, touched by the tears of 
innocent Heva, he modified the sentence and promised 
him a redeemer. Doomed henceforth to toil and sorrow 
Adima was banished from Paradise, but Heva volunta- 
rily followed her husband, and mitigated, by sharing, the 
severity of his punishment. In the fullness of time, 
Jezeus Chrishna was born of a virgin, and persecuted by 
men from his birth. After performing the most astound- 
ing miracles, and passing a life of unexampled benefi- 
cence, toil, and sorrow, he suffered death upon the cross. 
Three days he remained in the grave ; on the third day 
he ascended into heaven from a mountain on which he 
left the indelible impression of his footsteps ; and, at the 
end of the present cycle he will come to judge the world, 
when the righteous shall be rewarded, the wicked pun- 
ished, and the universe consumed by fire. 

2. The Persian Mythology taught that light and dark- 
ness are two eternal principles, and the origin of all 
things. Ormuzd was the personification of light, and 
Ahriman that of darkness. Ormuzd was represented as 
a good spirit, which dwelt in light ; Ahriman as a bad 
spirit, which dwelt in darkness. Originally both of these 
spirits were good; but Ahriman envying the luster of 
Ormuzd became dissatisfied, malicious and revengeful. 
At different epochs they both created various orders and 
species of beings. Ormuzd created by his fiat six im- 
mortal spirits for the service of his throne, and twenty- 
eight subordinate spirits. Ahriman created a similar 
number of bad spirits for his service. For three thou- 
sand years Ormuzd and Ahriman dwelt with their angels. 
At the termination of that period Ormuzd, in six days, 
created the vegetable and animal kingdom, including 
man. On the seventh day he ceased to labor, and cele- 



SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOC+Y. 



29 



brated the event by a festival at which all the subjects of 
his kingdom were assembled. A period of innocence 
and social intercourse subsisted between divine and 
human beings for three thousand years. At the termi 
nation of that period, a three thousand years' contest 
arose between Ormuzd and Ahriman, by which gods, 
angels and men were divided into hostile factions, con- 
vulsing earth and heaven by the tremendous shock of 
their collisions. For three thousand years longer will 
this divine war be protracted, during the events of which 
Ahriman will constantly encroach on the domains of Or- 
muzd; but at the expiration of that period, Ormuzd, by 
a rapid succession of victories, will annhilate Ahrimairs 
army and conciliate his friendship and homage. This 
auspicious event will be celebrated by the establishment 
of universal peace and order; the dead will arise; the 
servants of Ormuzd, the practicers of wisdom and vir- 
tue, will pass Shinevad, the bridge of heaven ; the ser- 
vants of Ahriman, the practicers of folly and vice, will 
be hurled into hell; and the universe be wrapt in the 
flames of a general conflagration. 

3. 'The Scandinavians — the Pagan inhabitants of Ice- 
land, Norway, Sweden and Denmark — who emigrated, at 
unknown periods, from Caucasus near the Caspian sea, 
held that the original conditions of the universe consisted 
of a bortomless pit, a world of mist, and a world of 
fire. In the world of mist was an enormous fountain 
which fed four rivers. These rivers flowed into the 
great cavern and rolled along until they became frozen 
into solid sheets of ice, which becoming piled upon 
one another in successive layers, formed in course of 
time a prodigious iceberg. A warm wind came from 
the land of fire and, imparting heat to the ice, it melted 
into drops of lite. These life drops united and formed 
Ymer, the ice giant, and Adumbra, a cow. Under the left 
arm of the ice giant grew a little man and woman, and 
one of his legs begat a son from the other. These off- 
springs were the progenitors of a race of ice giants, and 
were cold, violent and destructive. From the dugs of 



30 



SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. 



the cow Adumbra issued four streams of milk, by which 
the gods were nourished. By licking a salt stone which 
nourished her, it one day generated human hair ; the 
next, a human head; the third, a human body. This 
divine production was the god Bure. He had a son 
named Bore, who married Beistar, daughter of the ice 
giant of the mountain, who gave birth to Odin, Wile and 
Ye. These three gods became the rulers of the universe ; 
and their progeny, like themselves, were powerful, holy 
and benevolent. The two races- of the gods were constant- 
ly at loggerheads, and terrible combats ensued between 
them. In one of these hostile conflicts, the divine race 
of Bore, conquered the divine race of Ymer, and capturing 
the supreme god, made the world out of his body. From 
his blood they made the sea and rivers ; from his flesh 
the earth ; from his bones the rocks ; from his hair the 
grass; from his teeth the stones ; from his brains the 
clouds ; and from his skull the heavens. Out of a block 
the three gods, Oden, Wile and Ye, hewed the form of 
a man. Odin gave him life and soul; Wile, motion and 
reason ; Ye, sight, hearing and speech. His progeny are 
the common people. The giant Darkness begat Night. 
Night was thrice married : first, to Ether, and begat 
Matter ; second, to Maker, and begat Earth ; and third, 
to Twilight, and begat Day. Night and Day were trans- 
lated by Odin to heaven. They are provided with cars 
and horses, by which they alternately drive around the 
earth. The hoar-frost is the foam of Night's chargers. 
Mover begat Sun and Moon. The gods falling in love 
with them translated them to heaven. Odin's sons are 
Thor, the god of thunder, whose steps sound like many 
storms and whose hammer breaks the hardest substance ; 
Beldare, the god of eloquence, beautiful as the lily ; Tyr, 
lofty as a fir, who wounds with a look, brandishes the 
thunderbolt of battle and abhors peaceful negotiations ; 
Braga, the god of music; Hermode, the word of god, 
armed with helmet and mail; Yider, the god of silence; 
Wale, the god of the bow ; and Niccord, the god of nav- 
igation, who shakes his bow in the roaring storm and the 



SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. 



31 



waves subside in peace. By his wife Scada, daughter of 
the mountain giant, he begat Friea, who floats on the 
shining garments of Spring, rules the sun, gives rain, 
fruitfulness and death; and Frei, whose eves are au eternal 
Spring, who is the protectress of lovers, and the auditor 
of human prayer. Frei's daughter, is Odun, the model 
of grace and beauty. Iduna, the wife of Braga, the god- 
dess of poetry, preserves the apples of immortality which 
give the gods immortal youth. The god Humda 1 , who 
guards the rainbow, the bridge to heaven, sees equally 
well at night or day ; he hears the grass grow on the 
fields, and the wool on the sheep. Syra, the goddess of 
medicine is physician to the gods ; Genseone, a divine 
virgin, is the protectress of chastity; Irylla, a celestial 
virgin, the goddess of faith and friendship, kisses away 
the tears of sorrow; Sione, the goddess of first love, dis- 
poses hearts to mutual regard; Labna, the goddess of 
union, reconciles divided lovers ; Wara, the goddess of 
true love, penetrates the secrets of all hearts, protects 
lovers, hears their vows, punishes the violators of faith, 
and unites true love ; Snotra, the goddess of youth, pro- 
tects virtuous maids and youths ; and Synia, the goddess 
of righteousness, awards justice and punishes perjury. 

Igdrosal, the tree of the world, a stupendous ash, 
stands over the well of time; its top reaches heaven; its 
branches cover the world. It has three roots, one among 
the gods, one among the giants, and one among the 
damned. The fountain of wisdom springs from the mid- 
dle root, where the gods hold their cabinet meetings, and 
decide upon questions of law and policy. On the top of 
the tree sits an eagle overlooking the universe ; a squirrel 
runs up and down its trunk; four stags ruminate under 
its branches, and gnaw its bark ; a serpent feeds upon its 
root ; the stem rots ; the holy virgins nourish it with. 
water from the sacred fountains ; from its leaves fall the 
dews of honey. Over this fountain sing two sw T ans, and 
on its banks are heard the song of fate and the voices of 
the Past and Present in converse with the gods. 

The gods live in Asgard, a powerful fortress, connected 



32 



SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. 



with earth by the bridge Belfrost, the rainbow. In the 
center of Asgard, in the vale of Ida, are the palaces of 
frendsliip, of love, of joy and of Valhalla, surrounded 
by forests of golden trees. Valhalla, the palace where 
fallen heroes reside, is imbosomed in a fragrant grove, 
and affords exhilarating prospects of luxuriant landscapes. 
The heroes pass their time in bloody wars and riotous 
living, but at the sound of the festival trumpet all their 
wounds are healed. The Valkyries, unbegotten god- 
desses, awful, yet beautiful, armed with mail and helmet, 
conduct heroes at their death to Valhalla, and till their 
cup with the god-sustaining oil of Enhirim. 

Nifheim is hell. It is ruled by Helea, its goddess ; 
guarded by Feuris, a wolf whose expanded jaws reach to 
the top and bottom of the universe ; and is inhabited by 
Loke, a beautiful but malignant being; Angerbode, 
whose wrathful growl strikes the soul with terror ; and all 
human beings that have died of disease and old as;e. 

Odin, called also Woden, Goden, All-father and Our- 
father, is the god of gods, the eldest and best, the only 
immortal being. He sits with his wife, Friga, on a 
throne from which he surveys the universe. An eternal 
contest is going on between the inhabitants of Nifheim, 
and the inhabitants of Asgard. The giants will storm 
Asgard ; the bridge w^ill fall ; the wolf swallow the earth ; 
and the gods perish. Odin and a single human pair will 
survive the general destruction. This pair, nourished by 
the morning dew, will renew the human race. 



DIVINE DEVELOPMENTS. 



33 



CHAPTER Y. 

Divine Developments and Mutations as Exhibited in the History 
of Christian and Pagan Theology. 

A striking analogy is observable between the histori- 
cal developments and mutation of Christianity and Pagan- 
ism. The antediluvian, patriarchal, Mosaic and Christian 
dispensations, though not radically antagonistical, are so 
inflexibly politically different, that the establishment of 
the onfe has been the subversion of the other. The immor- 
tality of the soul, a fundamental principle of Christianity, 
was unknown to Moses and his ancestors ; it was, however, 
discovered or invented by the heathen ; and the Jews, in 
their Babylonish captivity, caught from the Pagan Chal- 
deans their first glimpse of its rays. The Mosaic law, 
prescribed by infinite perfection, w r as deemed imperfect 
by the church, which repealed all its provisions except- 
ing those which impose the payment of tithes. The 
inexorable hand of time and policy, and the uncompro- 
mising influence of climate, national usage and organi- 
zation, have so often modified divine institutions in accom- 
modation to the demands of human taste and caprice that 
in every age and country the same religion wears a dif- 
ferent aspect. A cursory glance at Paganism will be 
sufficient to show that this constituent of othodoxy w r as 
not absent from it. The birth of a new god, or its trans- 
formation into a different character by the demand of 
time, taste or policy, w^as not of unfrequent occurrence. 
Thus we find the goddess Cybele represented, first, by a 
dark quadrangular stone ; second, by the image of a 
matron ; third, by that of a vailed woman ; fourth, by a 
woman with staff and drum ; fifth, by a woman having 
the sun in one hand and the moon in the other; sixth, by 
a woman sitting on a lion with a thunderbolt in her 
hand; and, seventh, a woman in a chariot drawn by 



34 



DIVINE DEVELOPMENTS. 



lions. She was first reverenced as the symbol of fruit- 
ful nature ; next, as personified nature ; next, as an em- 
blem of civilized life ; next, as a symbol of the mysteries 
of nature ; and finally as a representation of man's do- 
minion over wild animals by means of cymbals, drums 
and other noises. The virgin Diana was represented, 
first, as a female crowned with a diadem; second, as a 
female crowned with a crescent ; third, as a huntress with 
bow, arrow and hounds ; fourth, with many breasts, and 
encircled with many bands; fifth, with three faces; and 
sixth, with three heads, one of a horse, one of a dog and 
one of a boar. Hecate was represented, first, as a woman 
with serpent's feet, and neck and shoulders entwined 
with snakes; next, with three human heads; next, with 
Diana's three faces. The earliest representation of Isis 
was a female figure, with cow's horns, Egyptian hood, a 
mantle fastened by a knot, and a lotus and sistrum in 
hand ; at later periods she was changed into a female 
with many breasts. Venus, according to her statues, 
was first the symbol of maternal power ; then of chastity 
and love ; and lastly of ideal love and beauty. The 
nymphs, according to their sculptures, were originally 
nature's nourishing principle, then of her nursing princi- 
ple, then they became protectresses, and were divided 
into Dryads, protectresses of woods ; Orestiades, protec- 
tresses of mountains; Naiades, protectresses of fountains; 
Potamides, protectresses of rivers ; Limniades, protec- 
tresses of lakes ; Nereides, protectresses of seas ; and 
Napsese, protectresses of valleys. The Horse, goddess 
of the air, also underwent a continual series of transform- 
ations, from the old Attic, through the Homeric to the 
Hesiod period. From physical qualities they became 
transformed, through the refinements of philosophy, to 
moral abstractions; from goddesses of beauty to those of 
order ; then to those of time ; then to those of the year ; 
then to those of spring and summer; then to those of 
youth and beauty. The Horse at first consisted of two 
persons ; next, of three persons ; next, of four ; and suc- 
cessively, of as many persons as their subsequent trans- 



DIVINE DEVELOPMENTS. 



35 



formation into moral ideas. Thus Thalia, the goddess of 
blossoms, became the goddess of spring, and Carpa, the 
goddess of fruit, became the goddess of autumn. As 
physical qualities Hegemone, the goddess of leadership, 
was made governor of the year, and Uxor, the goddess of 
connubial fondness, was made the giver of increase; and, 
as moral abstractions were added, Dike, the goddess of 
justice, Eumonia, the goddess of order, and Eirene, the 
goddess of peace. The nine Muses were originally three 
fountains at Thrace in Persia. Time, fable and poetry 
elevated them to the dignity of divinites, under the names 
of Melete, goddess of meditation; Mneme, godde.- s of mem- 
ory ; and Aoede, goddess of poetry and music. These 
goddesses were the patrons of science and the liberal arts. 
Pierus of Macedonia having discovered nine others who 
had been begotton by Jupiter in nine nights with Mne- 
mosyne, brought them into Thespia. The names of those 
new-found goddesses w r ere Erato, the goddess of loveliness; 
Calliope, the goddess of eloquence ; Euterpe, the god- 
dess of gracefulness ; Thalia, the goddess of gladness ; 
Melpomene, the goddess of music; Terpsichore, the god- 
dess of dancing; Clio, the goddess of fame ; Urania, the 
goddess of astronomy ; and Polyhymnia, the goddess of 
singing. Time, however, to whose transforming power 
neither men nor gods are invulnerable, changed Erato 
into the goddess of lyric poetry; Euterpe, into the god- 
dess of music ; Calliope, into the goddess of epic poetry ; 
Terpsichore into the goddess of dancing, Thalia, into the 
goddess of comedy ; Melpomene, into the goddess of 
tragedy ; and Clio, into the goddess of fame. 

The Parcee, originated from Clotho, the goddess of 
spinning. Time added to her family Atropos and Lach- 
esis; the first, the goddess of unalterable fate; and the 
second, the goddess of chance. Clotho was afterward 
transformed into the goddess of the present ; Atropos into 
the goddess of the past; and Lachesis into the goddess of 
the future. The first holds in her hand a thread ; the sec- 
ond, a pair of scissors; the third, a pen ; and all have their 
feet on spindles. Clotho speaks, Atropos cuts, Lachesis 



36 



DIVINE DEVELOPMENTS 



writes, and all carelessly sing the song of human fate, 
while they keep their spindles going. 

The Furies, the avengers of perjury, murder and in- 
gratitude, were at first but three in number ; that is, 
Alecto, Megcera and Tisiphone; but metaphysical ab- 
stractions gradually added, in the course of time, fifty 
others. They were represented at first with snakes for 
hair, claws for fingers ; robed in black gowns, and so ma- 
lignant and deformed that their names were never pro- 
nounced, their godships being respectfully referred 
to as the reverential deities. But the refining hand of 
taste and elegance, in succeeding ages, transformed them, 
first, into huntresses of wild beasts, then into personifica- 
tions of future punishment, and finally into benevolent 
goddesses. 

Not only were ancient divinities subject to the changes 
and improvements of their worshipers, but their ordi- 
nances of future rewards and punishments were subject to 
the same law. The ancient Egyptians appointed forry- 
two judges to decide if deceased persons were entitled to 
burial. If they had in life neglected to observe the rights 
of religion, or had died insolvent, or had no relative or 
friend able or willing to cancel their pecuniary ohliga- 
gations, their corpses Avere cast into a ditch called Tar- 
tarus. This receptacle was so named from the word 
Tarta (lamentation), in reference to the wailings of the 
friends of the departed over his dishonored remains. But 
if the corpse was judged worthy of the rites of sepulture, 
it was conveyed to a cemetery, situated beyond the Aehe- 
rusian lake. To reach this graveyard, it being neces- 
sary to cross the lake, a small sum was exacted for fer- 
riage. 

AVhen the funeral rights of Egypt became the theology 
of Greece, the ditch Tartarus became a sulphurous lake 
of fire, the graveyard, an Elysium of endless bliss, 
Osiris was changed into Pluto, the forty-two judges into 
Chimeras, Harpies and Gorgons, the ferriage into tribute- 
money for the death record, and the three-headed horse 
which the Egyptians inscribed on mummies and monu- 



Dl V I N E DEV E LO PMENTS . 



37 



merits in representation of the Acherusian ferry and the 
three customary farewells by relatives to deceased per- 
sons, into a three-headed dog, which they named Cer- 
berus, and which they placed at the gates of Tartarus to 
prevent the escape of the dead. 

The ancient Greeks having no conception of an exist- 
ence in another world, located their heaven on the earth. 
At first it was a delightful meadow ; next a plain for wrest- 
ling and heroic pastime ; then a vale with odoriferous 
laurel groves, blest with perpetual Spring, where neither 
pain nor infirmity could enter; then an island at the re- 
motest confines of the earth ; then it gradually receded 
before the explorers of land and ocean to more distant 
regions ; and, probably, would have vanished entirely 
away had it not been cautiously located in the center of 
the earth, just as far as the east is from the west. 

The character and geographical location of Tartarus 
were subject to similar changes. The kingdom of the dead 
was originally placed in the land of Cimmerian darkness, 
lying on the Western Ocean where the sun sets. Emi- 
gration and commerce discovering that these regions en- 
joyed a brilliant sun, were rich in gold, and inhabited by 
a civilized and cultivated people, the region of perpetual 
darkness was removed to the lake of Avernus, near Naples. 
The researches of commerce proving this place one of 
the most fertile and beautiful regions of the earth, it was 
removed to the banks of the Vistula. Scientific investi- 
gation disproving this fallacy, the perpetual darkness was 
removed to a subterranean cavern, which was divided 
into two apartments — one, Tartarus, wdiere the wicked 
suffer ; the other, Hades, where the good and bad live 
together, and only the impious suffer ; aftenvard it was 
removed to the center of the earth, as a more secure and 
inaccessible location ; and finally placed opposite Elys- 
ium, safe beyond the inquisition of impious navigators, 
miners and investigators. 



38 



PAGAN SAVIORS LOGOS. ETC. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Divine Characteristics — Saviors — Logosea — Miraculous Concep- 
tions — Phenomena — Incarnations of Divinity — Alarming 
Prophecies at the birth of Infant Gods — Miraculous Escapes — 
Infant Miracles — Miraculous Voices — Divine Physicians — Di- 
vine Prophetic Power — Transfigurations — Divine Sufferings 
— Descent into Hell — Resurrection and Ascension. 

We will now notice some of the characteristics of the 
gocU. It will be impossible not to discover in them the 
essential features of Christianity; sometimes identical in 
form; at other times different in form but identical in 
substance; and at all times the same thing under a new 
name. 

1. The Pagan Saviors. All Pagan nations had divine 
saviors. Jezeus Chrishna was the Hindoo savior, God- 
ama the Burmese savior, Mithra the Persian savior, 
Prometheus the Greek savior, Jbsculapius the Latin 
savior; Hiawatha. Micabou, Chiabo. Manaboza and Tau- 
ringwagoa, the Indian savior, and Horns the Egyptian 
savior ; the latter is often represented in the arms of 
his mother suckling her breast with a halo of glory 
around his head. Besides these saviors, Cyrus, Ptolemy 
Soter, Augustus, and other royal personages bore the title 
of savior. In the Old Testament the term is applied to 
the Jewish priests, kings and nation. 

2. Logos, or Word. This title was borne by many ot 
the Pagan gods. Jezeus Chrishna was the Hindoo word 
of god ; Buddha, the Buddhaistie word of god ; Fo, the 
Chinese word of god ; Hermes, the Greek word of god ; 
Mercury, the Latin word of god ; and Theuth and Xoun, 
Nif or Kneph, the Egyptian words of god. 

3. The birth of a god was frequently announced by the 
appearance of a new star. Such stars are said to have 
appeared at the birth of Abraham, Moses, Augustus and 
Mithridates. 



MLR ACT LOUS CONCEPTION. 



30 



4. The gods were often miraculously conceived. A 
number of them were born of virgins. The Muses, nine 
daughters of Jupiter, were immaculate virgin mothers. 
The Hindoos have a temple consecrated to the virgin 
about to bring forth ; the Gauls observed a festival in 
honor of a virgin who should bring forth. The virgin 
Devanaguy miraculously conceived Jezeus Ohrishna ; and 
another Buddha. Juno spontaneously gave birth to 
Mars and Neptune ; Terra to Uranus and Pontus ; 
and Chaos to Darkness and Night. The divine river 
Sperchius gave birth to Menestheus. Io became impreg- 
nated with Epaphus by Jupiter overshadowing her with 
a cloud, and Dame with Perseus by his overshadowing 
her with a golden mist. A cow was impregnated with 
Apis by a ray of light from the moon, and Moye by Fo 
with a ray of light from heaven. Venus was begotten by 
the sea-foam ; the Myrmidons were begotten by ants ; 
the Furies by drops of blood ; the Sparti of Boeotia by 
dragons' teeth ; the 3,000 Oceanides by the ocean; the 
Nymphs by fountains ; the Naiads by rivers ; the Dry- 
ads by forests ; Erectheus by the furrows of a plow ; the 
Syrens by the blood that flowed from Achelous' horn in 
combating with Hercules; and Chrysaor, with his golden 
sword, and the horse Pegasus, from drops of blood which 
fell from Medusa's dissevered head. Jupiter Ammon 
was begotten by Jupiter and; a ram, Minerva sprang from 
his skull, and Bacchus from his thigh. Deucalion and 
his wife Pyrrha having survived the universal deluge, 
repeopled the earth by the first throwing stones behind 
him, which turned into men, the second throwing stones 
behind her which turned into women. The birth of the 
sun was annually celebrated by the Hierophants, when 
a babe was exhibited in a cradle. Amor the eldest god 
was unbegotten. Parava, Zeroene Akirene, Fate, Anima 
Mundi, the Valkyries, Chaos, and Terra, were unbegot- 
ten divinities. The Parcse were begotten three times ; 
first, by Life; second, by Nox and Erebus ; and third, by 
Jupiter amd Themis. Amun-Ra-Harmachus, an Egyp- 
tian deity, the only begotten, created himself; Put-Api- 



40 



MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION. 



Fo, was self-begotten ; Shasu-Ka was formed out of the 
substance of the sun. Shu formed the substance of 
which he was made, which was self-created substance ; 
lie created his own body and the substance of which his 
fathers body and his grandmother's body were made. 

On the walls of an ancient temple at Luxor, is sculp- 
tured a representation of the annunciation, conception, 
birth and adoration of King Amunothph III. The 
annunciation is made by Thoth to the virgin queen Marit- 
mes. The conception is symbolized by Athor, the god- 
dess of love and beauty, and Kneph, the god of life, a 
divine spirit, presenting each to the mouth of the virgin 
a Tau, a cross with the upper end formed into an egg- 
shaped loop, symbolizing the generative organs. The 
birth is represented by a number of midwives. (Ex.i, 16.) 
The adoration is represented by gods and priests on their 
knees presenting frankincense, gold and myrrh to the 
new-born god. Every Egyptian king deemed himself 
like Apis, which never had a father, but was generated 
by divine influence. Even while living he was added to 
the number of the gods. He denied his earthly parentage, 
and disclosed that he was the son of Pa, and a triple god. 
He was also considered a mediator between his subjects 
and the gods. A Greek inscription on an Egyptian mon- 
ument says, "Alexander being a god is able to appease 
the gods." 

5. The amours of gods and goddesses with mortals 
gave birth to incarnations possessing divine and human 
natures. Apollo begat JEsculapius by Arsinoe; Peleus, 
seven children by Thetis ; M ars, Harmonius by Venus ; 
Hercules, fifty children by fifty daughters of Thesperus ; 
Jupiter begat Perseus by Danse, Prometheus by Clymene, 
Argos by Kiobe, Mercury by Maea, Lacedemon by Tay- 
geta, Alanthus by her sister Electra, Bacchus by Semele, 
Sarpedon, Rhadamaiithus and Minos by Europa, Archus 
by Callista, Epaphus by Io, Helen and Pollux by Leda, 
^Echus by iEgina, Amphion and Zethus by Antiope, 
Tetyros, the giant, by Elara, and Hercules by Alcmena. 
The Dalse-Laina of the Chinese, Moguls and Kalmucks, 



PERILS OF DIVINE IN FA NTS 



41 



m his nature, is human and divine, the holy one, the 
father of mankind, who never dies but transmits his soul 
to his successor. Alexander the Great, proclaimed him- 
self a god, and exacted divine honors of mortals. Mark 
Anthony at Athens claimed to be Bacchus, and was wor- 
shiped with the honors of that god. Julius Osesar cre- 
ated himself a god, and had temples, altars and a priest- 
hood consecrated to his divinity. 

6. Current prophecies at the birth of the gods respect- 
ing their future kingdom and dominion so alarmed the 
jealousy of the divine fraternity, or of some royal mortal, 
that their lives were in imminent jeopardy, and the event 
of their birth was often a calamity to babes. Uranus, in 
order to defeat a divine prophecy that one of his children 
w r ould dethrone him, imprisoned them in hell as soon as 
they were born; and Saturn, for a similar reason, swal- 
lowed his as soon as his wife had given them birth. 
Jupiter, alarmed for the stability of his divine authority 
by a current prophecy that Thetis, his wife, pregnant 
with Minerva, would give birth to a god whose greatness 
and dominion would exceed his own, swallowed her alive. 
Typhon sought the infant life of Horus, and Juno the 
destruction of Bacchus and Apollo, before they were 
born. Perseus, with his mother, w r as thrown into the 
sea as soon as he was born. JEsculapius was exposed by 
his mother Coronis; Cybele, the mother of god, was 
committed to the mercy of fate on Mount Cybelus ; and 
Vulcan, shortly after his birth, was thrown by his mother 
into the sea, where he remained nine years. For per- 
sonal safety Fo, by divine appointment, was brought forth 
in a cave, and Jupiter on a desert mountain. Two 
snakes sent by Juno sought to devour Hercules when he 
was five months old. The seven children of Peleus by 
Thetis, the goddess of the sea, were placed into fire by 
their mother to burn out the mortal part of their father. 
Isis impregnated by Mercury with seven illegitimate 
children, was forbidden by Rhea to give them birth on 
any day of the year ; but Mercury, in gambling with the 
Moon, won from her sufficient light to make five inter- 



42 



PERILS OF LNFAHT GODS. 



ealary days, by which he accommodated the necessity 
of his mistress. Khanga, rajah of Medura, being in- 
formed that Chrishna was born king of his realm, ordered 
all babes of the age of Chrishna in his kingdom to be 
put to death. Ancient kings were so remarkably anal- 
ogous to the gods, and perhaps so much the same tiling, 
modified by popular intelligence and demand, that the 
miraculous events of the one are attributed to the other. 
Hence the wholesale slaughter which often signalized the 
birth of gods, is said also to have signalized the birth 
of Isnnrod, Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, and Augustus. 

7. The infant gods were miraculously rescued from 
the perils that threatened their existence. Rhea rescued 
her sons JS r eptune and Jupiter from the devouring jaws 
of her divine husband by the artifice of presenting him 
with a foal for the first and a black stone for the second ; 
and compelled him also to disgorge those whom he had 
swallowed, by the secret administration of an emetic. 
The embryo of Bacchus was safely preserved in Jupiter's 
thigh, and that of Minerva in his skull. The life of 
Bacchus was preserved by having him secretly conveyed 
to India where he was nursed by goddesses. The germ 
of Minerva having fully gestated in the brain of Jupi- 
ter, the god was seized with the pangs of labor, and re- 
questing his physician to cut his skull open to see what 
was the matter there, and the physician complying, Mi- 
nerva, in full womanhood and complete armor, sprang 
forth to his astonished gaze. Horns was saved by flight ; 
Achilles was snatched from devouring flames ; Jupiter 
was nursed by goddesses and fed by doves; ^Esculapius 
was suckled by goats until found by shepherds by whom 
he was reared ; Cybele was nurtured by panthers and 
lions until some hunters discovered and took care of her ; 
and Jezeus Chrishna escaped the assassin's dagger by 
growing in five minutes to the stature of full boyhood. 

8. The infant gods always attested their divine origin 
by the exhibition of superhuman intelligence, sagacity 
and strength. Hercules, before he was born, assisted 
the gods in subduing the rebellious giants, and when five 



INFANT GODS MIRACULOUSLY SAVED. 



43 



months old strangled two enormous serpents sent to de- 
stroy him. Apollo when five days old slew Python the 
terrible dragon. Mercury, when but two hours old, 
killed a terrapin, converted the shell into a lyre, stole 
Apollo's cattle, drove them backward to avoid being 
tracked, deceived- his mother, and so audaciously lied to 
the gods assembled in sacred council that the grave dig- 
nitaries broke forth into involuntary fits of laughter. 
Fo gave seven steps as he leaped from his mother's 
womb. Buddha spoke and walked at the moment of 
his birth, and when five months old stood upon the air. 
Chrishna walked at his birth. A few hours after he was 
born he slew the terrible dragon Oaliya, and several pro- 
digious monsters and. serpents. At the age of seven he 
held a mountain on the tip of his finger, and at the age 
of fourteen astonished philosophers and priests at his po - 
lemical learning and ability. 

9. A miraculous voice frequently announced the birth 
and character of a god. When iEsculapius was born, 
Apollo through the Delphic Oracle proclamed him to be 
his son. When Osiris was given to the world, a voice 
came from heaven saying, " Behold the lord of heaven 
and earth is born." While the mother of Confucius was 
gestating, a celestial quadruped laid a gem at her feet 
inscribed with these words : " The son of the essence of 
water shall succeed to the withering Chow and be a 
throneless king." Godama at the moment of his birth 
exclaimed: "I am the noblest and greatest among men. 
This is the last time I shall be born." Fo exclaimed 
with a loud voice as he came into the world : " None in 
heaven or earth deserves adoration besides me." 

10. The divine saviors were proficients in the healing 
art ; sometimes they communicated the secret to the 
other deities, but generally preserved it hereditary in 
their families. They were musicians also, and success- 
fully employed it in their medical practice. Cybele, the 
mother of god, cured the diseases of children and animals 
by fifes and drums, and Apollo numerous maladies by 
vocal and instrumental music. Isis, the authoress of many 



41 



PROPHETIC &OD6. 



celebrated nostrums, which maintained celebrity for ages, 
taught Horus, her son, how to heal maladies and to raise 
the dead. ^Esculapius, by his miraculous cures, aston- 
ished men and gods. He reanimated the lifeless corpse of 
Tyndarus and Hippolytus. Pluto, apprehensive that he 
would depopulate the kingdom of the dead, complained 
of his success to Jupiter, who slew him with a. thunder- 
bolt ; but he rose superior to the divine vengeance, and 
cured after his death innumerable patients, and arrested 
the course of epidemical plagues. So holy were his tem- 
ples that dogs and flies declined to enter them, while the 
sick and infirm who slept in them received communica- 
tion from him in dreams. On a frieze of the temple which 
once stood on an isle in the Tiber, is a representation of 
his curing two blind men, who, in the midst of a crowd of 
attesting, awe-struck witnesses, are acknowledging his 
divinity and thanking him for his beneficent miracle. 
Jezeus was also a medical practitioner of great eminence. 
He cured the lame, the blind and the deaf. He raised 
the dead. The poor acknowledged his miracles, and a 
woman healed of an inveterate malady poured on his head 
a box of precious ointment. 

11. All the gods possessed, in a greater or less degree, 
the divine faculty of prophecy. All maniacs were re- 
garded as divinely inspired, and their words were 
deemed prophetical. Homer, addressing the Muses, 
says: 

" Say, virgins, seated round the throne divine, 
All knowing Goddesses, immortal Xine ! 
Since earth's wide region, heaven's unmeasured height, 
And Hell's abyss, hide nothing from your sight." 

lUad, Book II, p. 66. 

Again : 

" Old Merop's sons, whom skilled in fate to come 
The sire forewarned, and prophesied their doom." — p. 78. 

At the temple of Delos were golden virgins whose rav- 
ishing voices gave prophetic responses. Marble statues 
on temples in Greece and Egpyt, also, gave oracular an- 
swers. The figure of ^Esculapius at Alexandria held long 



D i v tNE TRANSFIGURATIONS. 



45 



conversations. A head at the oracle of Orpheus at Les- 
bos vocally predicted future events. Odin had a speak- 
ing head incased in gold, which uttered responses having 
all the authority of divine revelations. Jupiter was a 
great prophet ; but Prometheus surpassed him in fore- 
knowledge, having penetrated secrets of his destiny un- 
known to him. The Parcse, goddesses of fate ; the Nereids, 
fifty in number, goddesses of the sea; the Leimoniades, 
meadow nymphs ; the Dryades, wood nymphs ; the Ore- 
ades, mountain nymphs; the Naiades, fountain nymphs; 
the Potamides, river nymphs; the Limniades, lake nymphs; 
the Kapsese, fountain nymphs; the Oceanides, ocean 
nymphs, and many other goddesses possessed the power 
of penetrating futurity. Jupiter Amnion prophesied 
through an oracle at Meroe ; Buddha through an oracle 
at Dodana; the Earth through an oracle at Boeotia ; Juno 
through an oracle near Corinth ; Jupiter through one at 
Eblis and one in a subterranean cave near Crete ; Her- 
cules through an orcale at Bura, where responses were 
made through dice ; Bacchus, at Amphiclea, which an- 
swered questions by dreams; the Black Doves, African 
priestesses, near Dodana, through the rustlings of the 
branches of a sacred oak ; Apollo, through an oracle at 
Delphi, through one at Delos where whispering trees re- 
turned answers, through one at Miletus, where sacred 
fountains answered interrogatories, and through another 
at Chios, where the ripplings of a consecrate 1 river an- 
nounced the secrets of the future. 

12. The gods possessed the power of transfiguration. 
They could appear and disappear at will ; exchange their 
image for that of another ; assume as many shapes as the 
clouds, and transform themselves or mortals into beasts, 
birds, or rocks. Yenus appeared to Helen in a borrowed 
form ; Pallas counseled Pandanus in mortal shape ; 
Phoebus took the guise of Asius ; Apollo addressed Hec- 
tor in Mentor's form ; Minerva assumed the appearance 
of Phoenix ; and Neptune and Pallas addressed Achilles 
in the human figure. Chrishna transfigured himself be- 
fore his disciples to strengthen their faith. Jupiter 



transfigured himself into every shape that suited his am- 
orous designs. To avoid the embraces of the mortal 
Peleus, the goddess Thetis underwent a long series of 
transfigurations. In order to escape destruction when 
Jupiter was defeated, Hercules transformed himself into 
a fish, Mercury into an ibis, and the other divine gener- 
als into other animals. Nereus and his fifty daughters, 
Oceanus and his three thousand daughters, transfigured 
themselves every hour of the day. Bacchus transformed 
the beautiful daughters of Minyas into hideous monsters, 
for impiously ridiculing his sacred rites. Some sailors at 
Naxos mistaking him by his purple robe for a king's son, 
seized and bound him; but the god transfigured himself 
into a lion, at which the sailors plunged themselves into 
the sea and were transformed into dolphins. The Naiad 
Syrinx was changed by her sister deities into a reed that 
she might preserve her virginity from the violence of the 
god Pan. The Sirens changed men into beasts, and the 
Muses changed the Sirens into magpies and populous 
tribes into grasshoppers. 

13. The gods in general were oppressed by calamities 
and reverses and underwent superhuman suffering. Ura- 
nus and Saturn were dethroned, castrated and exiled by 
their children; Mars was wounded by Minerva, and 
roared with agony like a thousand bulls ; he was also 
confined in a dungeon for thirteen months. These and 
other instances of divine suffering Homer relates in the 
following strain : 

"Meanwhile (his conquest ravished from his eyes) 
The raging chief in chase of Venus flies : 
No goddess she commissioned to the field, 
Like Pallas dreadful with her sable shield, 
Or fierce Bellona thundering at the wall, 
While flames ascend and mighty ruins fall ; 
Through breaking ranks his furious course he bends, 
And at the goddess his broad lance extends : 
Through her bright vail the daring weapons drove, 
The ambrosial vail, which all the graces wove; 
Her snowy hand the waving steel profan'd, 
And the transparent skin with crimson stain'd; 
From the clear vein a stream immortal flow'd 
Such streams as issue from a wounded god, 



i>! \ INK SI'K F&Rttt&S. 



4? 



Pure emanations ! uncorrupted flood ; 
•Unlike our gross, diseased, terrestrial blood; 
With tender shrieks the goddess rilled the place, 
And dropped her offspring from her weak embrace. 

Iliad, Book V, p. 125. 

"Dione then. Thy wrongs with patience bear, 
And share those griefs inferior powers must share, 
Unnumbered woes mankind from us sustain, 
And men with woes afflict the gods again. 
The mighty Mars in mortal fetters bound, 
And lodged in brazen vessels under ground, 
Full thirteen moons imprison'd roared in vain : 
Otus and Ephialtes held the chain ; 
Perhaps had perished ; had not Hermes' care 
Restored the groaning god to upper air. 
Great Juno's self has borne her weight of pain, 
The imperial partner of the heavenly reign ; 
Amphitryon's son infixed the deadly dart 
And filled with anguish her immortal heart. 

Ev'n hell's grim king Alcides' pow'r confest, 
The shaft found entrance in his iron breast ; 
To Jove's high palace for a cure he fled, 
Pierced in his own dominions of the dead ; 
Where Paeon, sprinkling heavenly balm around, 
Assuag'd the glowing pangs and closed the wound. 
Rash, impious man ! to stain the blest abode, 
And drench his arrows in the blood of god." — pp. 126, 127. 

" The javelin hiss'd ; the goddess urged it on; 
Where the broad cincture girts his armor round 
It pierced the god ; his groin received the wound, 
From the rent skin the warrior tugs again 
The smoking steel. Mars bellows with the pain 
Loud as the roar encountering armies yield, 
When shouting millions shake the thundering field. 
Both armies start, and trembling gaze around ; 
And earth and heaven rebellow to the sound." — p. 142. 

" Thus he who shakes Olympus with his nod ; 
Then gave to Paeon's care the bleeding god. 
With gentle hand the balm he poured around, 
And heal'd th' immortal flesh and clos'd the wound." — p. 144. 

" Not long Lycurgus view'd the golden light, 
That daring man who mix'd with gods in fight. 
Bacchus and Bacchus' votaries he drove, 
With brandished steel from Nyssa's sacred grove ; 
Their consecrated spheres he scatter'd round, 
With curling vines and twisted ivy bound ; 
While Bacchus headlong sought the briny flood, 
And Thetis' arms received the trembling god." 

Book VI, pp. 149, 150. 



<±8 



mvrxK 8 o b v v. r i >,g> 



" Then heav'd the goddess in her mighty hand 
A stone, the limit of the neighboring land, 
There fix'd from eldest times ; black, craggy, vast ; 
This at the heavenly homicide she cast. 
Thundering he falls, a mass of monstrous size ; 
And seven broad acres covers as he lies. 
The stunning stroke his stubborn nerves unbound, 
Loud o'er the field his ringing arms resound : 
The scornful maid her conquest views with smiles. 
And glorying, thus the prostrate god reviles." 

Book XXI, p. 190. 

Vulcan was turned out of heaven by Jupiter for at- 
tempting to release his mother whom her divine husband 
in punishment for loquaciousness had bound with a gold- 
en chain on mount Olympus. He was nine days in falling 
to the earth ; and, unfortunately, broke his immortal leg- 
in his descent, which rendered him an eternal cripple. 
Adonis was fatally wounded in the chase ; but trans- 
formed by Venus into an anemone in order to immor- 
talize his beauty. Brahma dies every year. Apollo was 
expelled from heaven, and compelled to pass a life on 
earth as a herdsman, tor having slain Python, Jupiter's 
favorite snake, and killed the Cyclops, who had forged 
the thunderbolt with which lie had slain JEsculapius, his 
son. Osiris was seized by Typlion, shut up in a box 
and cast into the sea. Being afterward found by Isis, 
his wife, he was again seized by the malignant god, and 
torn into fourteen pieces. A conspiracy was organized 
in heaven by the gods against Jupiter for the purpose of 
dethroning him, and binding him in chains. But pene- 
trating their treachery he summoned to his aid the terri- 
ble hundred-handed Briareus, through whom he held 
in check their heavenly insurrectionary proclivities. He 
was also obliged to undergo the military fatigues and 
calamities of a ten-years' war against the Titans. After 
subjugating this race of giants, another still more formi- 
dable arose to dispute his authority. In this contest the 
demi-gods so powerfully stormed Olympus, that the im- 
mortal gods fled to Egypt for safety ; and Typhanis, cap- 
turing Jupiter, the supreme god, cut out the tendons of 
his hands and feet, and imprisoned him in hell. From 



DIVINE SUFFERINGS. 



49 



this horrible region he was delivered by the artifice of 
Mercury, who lulling the Tartarean dragons to sleep, en- 
tered his cell, unmanacled his limbs and placed him in a 
winged chariot by which he ascended into heaven. Hav- 
ing by the employment of thunderbolts and the aid of 
friendly monsters acquired victory over men and gods, 
and in turn captured Typhseus, he buried him under the 
Phlegrsean hills of Italy, where his head forms Mount 
JEtna, and where by day he spits out vapor, and by night 
fire and stones. .zEsculapius, after having passed a labo- 
rious life in mitigating human sufferings, was slain by 
Jupiter to satisfy the king of hell, who had preferred a 
selfish and malicious complaint to the court of heaven. 
Hercules, who in obedience to god had entered deserts, 
slain lions, delivered his country from tribute, performed 
twelve superhuman labors, twice became deranged on 
religious subjects, and twice slain his children in divine 
paroxysm, was finally poisoned by a tunic sent him by 
Dejanira, his jealous wife. Bowed down with grief and 
sorrow 7 , he erected a funeral pile on Mount Oeta, and 
calmly placing himself upon it, was soon enveloped in 
consuming flames ; but Jupiter palled the mount in black- 
ness, from which arose a chariot and horses bearing Her- 
cules to heaven amid rejoicing claps of thunder. The 
savior Prometheus, whose nature embodied divinity and 
humanity, was the mediator between mankind and Jupi- 
ter, and in the fulfillment of his divine commission passed 
his life in shrewd and hard contests, and underwent 
superhuman suffering. When Jupiter determined to 
destroy the human race because they had become corrupt, 
Prometheus overawed his divine majesty and defeated 
his malignant purposes by stealing his sacred fire, which 
he had hidden in the earth, distributing it among men, 
teaching them arts and sciences and raising them to 
equal power and dignity w T ith the gods. When Jupiter, 
after having drowned the world, created men out of trees, 
Prometheus created a better race out of clay and water : 
and by heating them with dry w r ood in the sun infused 
into them fire and immortality. Jupiter then com- 



50 



DIVINE SUFFERINGS. 



manded Vulcan to make a woman of clay. Naming this 
woman Pandora, he gave her a box filled with vices, dis- 
eases, plagues, pestilence and death, and sent her among 
mankind, commanding her not to open it. By thus ex- 
citing her curiosity he intentionally insured the violation 
of his command, and the misery of the world, without 
incurring personal responsibility. The ambition and 
authority of Jupiter enabling him to exact of men exorb- 
itant contributions of sacrificial animals, Prometheus, by 
an artful contrivance, induced him to make a contract, 
by which he eventually discovered that in bis eagerness 
to conclude a good bargain, he had inadvertently agreed 
that in future men should have the flesh of animals, and 
the gods only the bones. Finding himself outwitted by 
the savior of mankind, he commanded Tulcan to torture 
him on Mount Caucasus, binding his hands and feet to 
the rock. He also commanded a vulture to tear out his 
heart every day, and Night to renew it. Two female 
spirits attended him, sympathized with him in his suffer- 
ings, and shaded their eyes witli their wings that they 
might not view the intolerable sight of his excruciating ag- 
ony. Petrus the fisherman forsook him. At his groan 
the earth shook; the rocks were rent ; and darkness cov- 
ered the earth at noonday. Hercules took him down. 
Jezeus Chrishna, after a life of toil, vexation and persecu- 
tion suffered death upon a cross. In Hindoo painting he 
is represented as bound hand and foot to a cross, a crown 
on his head, a hole in his side, and suspended from his 
neck a linga (male organ) and a yoni (female organ). 

In representation of a dying god, many of the Hindoo 
and Egyptian temples, and most of the Asiatic pagodas 
are built in the form of a cross. The temples of Chrishna, 
of Serapis, and those of Gothic structure, preserve the 
same symbolic architecture. Mr. Skelton, an orthodox 
authority, in his Ajjjjeal to Common Sense, p. 45, says: 
"How came it to pass that the Egyptians, Arabians and 
Indians, before Christ came among us, paid a remarkable 
veneration to the sign of the cross, is to me unknown, 
but the tact is known. In some cases the sign had been 



Divine stTFFERiNOs. 



51 



given to men who had been accused of crime but ac- 
quitted upon trial ; and in Egypt it stood for the signifi- 
cation of eternal life." The cross is to be seen on all 
Egyptian obelisks and monuments. It frequently occurs 
on pre-historic buildings. In the heroglyphical alphabet 
it is employed under different forms to represent respect- 
fully the letters k, n, s, r, a, e, o, u. Saturn bears a 
cross with ram's horns; Jupiter a cross with a horn; 
Venus a cross with a circle ; Mercury a horn, cross and 
circle, and Earth a cross and circle. Osiris bears a cross 
on his breast ; Khem a cross described on the front of 
his person from his shoulder to his hips ; and Vitriputzli, 
a Mexican god, bears one on his face and one on his 
shield formed by two cross feathers. The Egyptian 
mummies all bore the figure of the cross. The Egyptian 
divinities Amun-Ra, Mando, Neith, Isis, Athor, Jfasht, 
Horus, Anubis, Nephthys, Chronus, Seb, Serapis and 
Maut are always represented with crosses in their hands. 
The cross entwined by a serpent which ornaments mod- 
ern Gothic stained windows, was an. ancient symbol in 
Pagan religions. The hydraulic meters on the Nile, 
Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates, were crosses composed of 
an upright beam and three cross pieces. If the overflow 
of these rivers arose not above the first transverse beam, 
it indicated that sufficient fertilizing mud had not been 
deposited on their banks to prevent famine ; if it arose 
to the second cross beam, then a moderate harvest might 
be expected; but if it reached the third transverse beam, 
then the harvest would be abundant and the salvation of 
the people secure. The lowest overflow was represented 
on the kilometers by the figure of an emaciated being, 
with a crown of thorns symbolizing a sterile soil and a reed 
in his hand in mockery of his majesty. The importance 
of the kiie to the Egyptians exalted it in their estimation 
to a god, and the kilometers shared his attributes and 
honors. The latter like the former had not only a divine 
but a prophetic character; and became associated with the 
ideas of salvation, redemption, victory and triumph. • 
On numerous ancient medals and monuments, kings 



52 



DIVINE SUFFERINGS* *»> 



and the goddess of victory are represented with crosses 
in their hands. Augustus placed a cross on a globe to 
symbolize victory. This emblem becoming popular, it 
was almost universally adopted. Identical with this 
symbol are the orb and cross which now decorate the 
pontifical tiara. 

Plato says, "The son of god was impressed on the uni- 
verse in the shape of the letter X." Timseus, Municius 
Felix, a father of the church, addressing the Romans in 
his Octavius, says, "Your victorious trophies not only rep- 
resent a single cross, but a cross with a man on it. The 
sign of a cross naturally appears in a ship, either when 
she is under sail, or rowed with expanded oars like the 
palms of the hand. Not a jugum erected but exhibits 
the sign of the cross ; and when a true worshiper adores 
the true god, with hands extended he makes the same 
figure. Thus you see the sign of the cross has either 
some foundation in nature, or in your own religion, and 
therefore ought not be objected to against Christianity. 5 ' — 
Reeves' Apologies, Vol. I, p. 139. The cross is found 
among the mound builders. The Druid temple at Clas- 
sernis, is a circle of twelve upright stones, three of which 
are inscribed respectively with the w r ords East, West and 
South; the North has a double row T of nineteen stones 
forming a circle and a cross. St. Andrew's cross, angles 
degrees representing the equinox, has sometimes the 
figure on it of a lamb with five bleeding wounds. A 
Phoenician medal found in the ruins at Citium, is in- 
scribed with a cross, a rosary and a lamb. Among the 
ruins in Central America was found a cross with a sculp- 
tured man on it. In the planesphere of Mexico and Cen- 
tral America the twelve zodiacal signs form a circle, in- 
closing a cross with horizontal beams resting on the 
equinox, a crescent resting its horns on the transverse 
beams, and a puma over the whole reposing on the sign 
of July. 

The early Christians worshiped Christ under different 
symbols; some under the figure of a snake, some under 
that of a fish ; some under that of a lamb ; and others 



DIVINE DESCENT INTO HELL. 



53 



under that of a crucified man. To promote uniformity in 
the Christian symbolic worship, the Council of Constanti- 
nople in 680, in its 82d canon, decreed that in future 
Christ should be worshiped only under the representa- 
tion of a crucified man. 

It is admitted by the highest Christian authority that 
the form of the cross adopted by the early Christians was 
that of the Tau. This form differs from the others in 
having the stem above the transverse beam made into an 
egg-shaped loop. It is the cross which the Egyptian 
divinities bear in their hands, and is represented on nu- 
merous temples and monuments. It symbolizes the sex- 
ual organs or the union of the Hindoo linga and yoni. 
The admission by the most prejudiced authority that the 
early Christians adopted this form of the cross, the em- 
blem of the Phallic worship, annihilates the idea that 
their cross was a symbol of a crucified savior, or that 
Christ in their estimation was ever literally crucified. 

14. The gods are said to have descended into hell on 
various occasions. Uranus imprisoned his five divine 
sons in Tartarus, and Jupiter descended into its domains 
and released them. Typhous incarcerated Jupiter in 
hell, and Mercury descended there and released him. 
Bacchus descended into hell and brought back his 
mother, Seinele, and conducted her to Olympus. Or- 
pheus descended into hell and released his wife Eurydice. 
Hercules visited hell, broke the chains which bound his 
friends, and even brought up Cerberus, the three-headed 
dog which watched its gates. Ulysses visited hell and 
consulted there the knowledge and advice of his friends; 
and Osiris descended into hell, arose again, and taught 
his son Horus how to conquer Typhon. 

15. The gods arose from the dead and ascended into 
heaven. Jupiter, Hercules and ^Esculapius ascended into 
heaven in the sight of mortals. The death and resur- 
rection of Adonis was annually celebrated by the Greeks. 
During the performance of this rite an image was brought 
into the temple by a solemn procession of priests and 
people, and laid upon a bed as in a tomb. Loud wail- 



54 



RESURRECTION. 



ings and lamentations were then uttered. Lights were 
then suddenly produced, the body was raised and borne 
off as from a sepulcher amid shouts and triumphant songs. 
On the Egyptian funeral papyri are represented the re- 
turn of the soul after death to the body, the resurrection 
of the dead, the garden of Paradise, the judgment day, 
the rewards of the righteous, the punishment of the 
wicked in a lake of fire and the tormenting monsters 
Cerberi. Many of the Egyptian sculptures represent 
man at death yielding up his spiritual body which unites 
with Osiris, and his terrestial body which falls to the earth. 
By virtue of the rites of apotheosis ancient kings were 
enrolled among the gods. Romulus, who disappeared 
during a tremendous storm, was said to have ascended 
alive to heaven, but the senators w T ho adored him as a 
god were opposed to him as a king, and are suspected to 
have used their daggers in aiding; his flight. Glaucus, a 
fisherman, B. C. 600, w r as,by the rite of apotheosis made a 
national deity of Greece. Trophonius and Agamedes, 
brothers, who built the temple of Apollo at Delphi, hav- 
ing asked for their pay, the priests told them to wait 
eight days ; on the eighth day they were found dead in 
bed ; the priests said the gods took them ; enrolled them 
among the divinities, instituted sacrifices to them, and 
found a cave in which they delivered responses. Numa, 
Caesar, and nearly all the emperors dowm to Constantine 
the Great, and including him, were placed among the 
gods. Although it was required that some person should 
swear that he saw the soul of the emperor ascend into 
heaven, yet so many miscreants, fools and blockheads 
received the honors of apotheosis that the divine rite fell 
under public contempt ; and would, perhaps, have been 
abolished by the good sense of Paganism, had not the 
Catholic church baptized it with a new name and pre- 
served its essential features in the canonization of saints. 



HUMAN SACRIFICES. 



55 



CHAPTER VII. 

Human Sacrifices — Trinity — Demons — Hell — Conclusion. 

I . Between the dogmas of ancient Paganism and 
Christianity, many striking analogies occur, of which 
the following are a few examples : The Pagans generally 
believed that human sacrifices were peculiarly acceptable 
to god, and esteemed them in proportion to the beau- 
ty, innocence and dignity of the victims. In times of 
pnblic danger, which they conceived was produced by 
national impiety, the immolation of human beings was 
regarded as the most efficacious atonement that could be 
made and the surest method of appeasing divine anger 
and averting impending danger. The king of Norway, 
in order to purchase victory over Harold, sacrificed his 
son to Odin. Harold Aune, King of Sweden, in order 
to procure from Odin health and long life, devoted to 
him the blood of his nine sons. At Upsal, in Sweden, 
every ninth year nine persons were offered up in sacri- 
fice. The sacred groves of Odin were filled with human 
bodies offered up to him. Two thousand men were an- 
nually sacrificed by the ancient Mexicans. A noble 
virgin w r as annually sacrificed to the Nile by the Egyp- 
tians. Red-haired men were offered at the tomb of Osi- 
ris. Busiris sacrificed Thr^cians to propitiate the favors 
of the Nile. At Heliopolis three men were daily sacri- 
ficed to the goddess Lucina. Lycaon, king of Arcadia, 
was turned into a wolf because he offered human sacri- 
fices to Jupiter. Aristomenes sacrificed three men to 
Jupiter Ithome. Themistocles offered Persian captives 
to obtain divine assistance against the Persians. On an 
altar to Bacchus in Arcadia young damsels at certain 
religious festivals w r ere beaten to death. Achilles sacri- 
ficed twelve captives at the funeral of Patroclus. Polyx- 
ena was sacrificed to Achilles. Iphigenia was sacrificed 
by the assembled Council of Greece. Menelaus sacrificed 



56 



TKLV1TV. 



his two children ; and the Greeks annually sacrificed a 
number of children to Saturn. Under the Egyptian 
sacerdotal supremacy, the kings were obliged to sacri- 
fice themselves at the mandate of the priesthood. The 
Phoenicians at a yearly festival offered children to Mo- 
loch, a god of the sun. In times of public calamity, the 
king, arrayed in his royal robes and bearing the insignia 
of his dignity, was obliged to sacrifice hs only daughter 
to propitiate the divine favor. In the Eleusinian myste- 
ries, celebrated every five years in honor of Bacchus and 
Ceres, was presented to the initiated a chalice of wine as 
the blood of Bacchus and a wafer as the flesh of Ceres. 

2. The Trinity was another doctrine common to Pa- 
ganism and Christianity. The Hindoos had a trinity 
consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. The Egyptian 
divinities have sometimes a duality, at other times a 
trinity, and at other times a divisibility. Serapis was 
compounded of Osiris and Apis ; Horus-Ba, or Avereus, 
of Horus and Ba; Kneph-Ba, of Kneph and Ba ; and 
Sebek-Ba, of Sebeck and Ba. Horus was divided into 
three parts ; Anubis into six. The Egyptian trinities 
were numerous. Pthah-Soker-Osiris was compounded of 
Pthah, Soker and Osiris ; Amun-B a -Ehe of Amun-Ba 
and Ehe; and Amun-Ba-Ehe-Chem of Amun, Ba, Ehe 
and Chem. Every city had its trinity. At Thebes the 
trinity was Amun-Ba, Athor, and Chouson; at Abul- 
simble, in Xubia, Pthah, Amun-Ba and Horus-Ba; at 
Waddy, Pthah, Kneph and Athor ; at Silsilius, Amun- 
Ba, Horus-Ba and Hapimon; and at other places dif- 
ferent combinations of gods. The kings at their corona- 
tion were not only made gods, but triune gods. Accord- 
ing to a hieroglyphic al inscription in the British Museum, 
the three gods made one person. — (Inseript. Egypt. PI. 
36, 4, 5). Plutarch tells us that the Egyptians wor- 
shiped Horus under the form of a triangle : and that 
every good god had made himself three-fold, while evil 
deities remained single. When the oracle was consulted 
respecting the divine nature of Horus, it answered : " I 
am Apollo, Lord and Bacchus. v On porcelain charms 



DEMONS. 



57 



he is represented as god, son of god, and spirit of god. 
A group of statuary consisting of Isis with a crescent, 
Anubis with a dog's head, and Osiris with a key in his 
hand and a crab under his feet, is another representation 
of the Egyptian trinities. An Egyptian priest in reply 
to a question concerning god said : " First god, then word, 
1 hen divine spirit." The Greeks also had their trinities. 
An inscription on an obelisk at Rome says: " The mighty 
god, begotten of god, resplendent Apollo !" Diana is 
called tr.formis. She is represented in statuary with 
three faces, and sometimes with three heads: one 
like that of a horse, one like that of a dog, and 
one like that of a boar. The trinity of the Pla- 
tonists consisted of a supreme god, a logos, and a 
divine spirit ; that of the Persians of Ormuzd, Mithras 
and Ahriman; that of the Syrians of Momimus, Aser 
and Ares; that of the Canaanites of Bnal-She-Cisha, a 
self-triplicated deity ; that of the Mexicans of Mesitle, 
Tlaloc and Tercallaputa ; and that of the Peruvians of 
Apounti (the sun's father), Churanti (the sun's son), and 
Intigoaqus (the son's brother); also of Chuquilla (the 
thunder's father, Cataquilla (the thunder's brother), and 
Intyllupa (the thunder's son). 

3. Another dogma held in common by ancient Pagans 
and Christians was, that the air is inhabited by evil 
and good demons. These spirits maintain an inter- 
course between god and mortal, heaven and earth. They 
have power over human souls ; understand the secrets of 
the future; are the sources of prophecy; they wander 
in the air ; hover over stars; preside over dwellings; 
take possession of mortals at their birth ; follow them 
through life ; and conduct them at last to heaven or hell. 
Besides these demons there were others in Pagan My- 
thology monstrously misshapen and purely malignant. 
Such were the furies, the avengers of perjury and filial 
ingratitude, with serpents for hair, claws for fingers, eyes 
dropping gore, necks streaked with the blood from the 
human veins which they had sucked; such were the 
Harpies, with feet of a hen, wings of a bird, human 



58 



HELL. 



arms with claws ; which reside in hell, play with the 
storm, shriek in the tempests, and ride upon tornadoes 
and whirlwinds ; such were the Chimera, with lion's head, 
goat's body, dragon's tail, breathing forth flames from 
its mouth; such was Hecate, the daughter of hell and 
the goddess of magic, with serpent's feet and neck and 
shoulders horribly encircled with hissing snakes ; such 
were the Gorgons, three sisters, whose hair was formed of 
snakes; whose hands were brass; whose bodies were cover- 
ed with scales, and who had in common among them one 
eye, which turned to stone all it looked upon; such was 
Cerberus, which watched hell's gates, whose growl shook 
its walls, whom one hundred chains could not bind nor one 
hundred furies tame ; and such was the Grecian Typhon 
the most powerful and monstrously deformed deity, to 
which the goddess Terra, the Earth, had given birth. 
His head reached the stars, his eyes were formed of a 
hundred fiery serpents' heads, with black tongues darting 
poison and death ; his extended arms reached from east 
to west ; a hundred snakes formed his fingers, and his 
body was entwined with the monstrous folds of serpents, 
which raised their heads over his and outhissed torna- 
does. He roared like a lion, howled like a dog, and 
hissed like a serpent, so terribly that mountains shook 
at the sound. 

4. Another dogma incorporated in both the Pagan and 
Christian mythology, was a place of future punishment 
for the impious. The word hell in the New Testament 
is the rendering of four different terms in the original 
text, not synonymous in their signification — namely, 
Avernus, Gehenna, Tartarus and Hades. Avernus was a 
lake situated near Naples in a volcanic region. It was 
imbosomed in hills which were covered with dense forests 
of immense trees. The branches of the trees overhung 
the lake and cast upon it an eternal gloom ; and the 
miasma of decaying vegetation impregnated the air with 
poison and death. All that approached the place were 
peculiarly affected; and the cause being invisible, it was 
attributed to residing demons. These demons were a 



HELL. 



59 



savage people who ventured out only at night, and were 
known as Cimmerians. They were supposed to be the 
dead from the infernal regions, and to live in perpetual 
darkness. Here Ulyssus and ^Eneas descended into hell, 
congregated her hags and witches ; and her priests exor- 
cised demons, and disclosed to the credulous the secrets of 
their fate. This region was long regarded by the Chris- 
tian church as the mouth of hell. According to infallible 
Pope Gregory I, a hermit saw the soul of the Emperor 
Theodoric, an Arian, pass into the volcano of Lapari, one 
of the mouths of hell. — Gib. Decline^ Vol. iv, ch. xxxix, 
pp. 39, 40. 

Gehenna was a valley near Jerusalem. Plentifully 
watered by Siloam and Kedron, it was a fertile and agree- 
able spot, and at one time adorned with gardens and pal- 
aces. At a later period it was the receptacle of the filth 
of theheity, and a perpetual fire was there kept burning 
to abate its offensiveness. Here was the statue of Moloch, 
the Ammonian god of the sun. It was an iron image 
with the body of a man, and the head of an ox. At an 
annual festival the image was heated red hot, and child- 
ren placed in its extended arms as offerings to the sun. 
It was called Tophet, which signifies a drum, because that 
instrument was employed by the priests to drown the 
cries of the babe undergoing the excruciating torture of 
being roasted alive. 

Hades and Tartarus are thus described by Plato: 
"Above it (the abode of the blest) are several gulfs, the 
deepest of which is Tartarus. All rivers flow into this 
abyss, and diffuse themselves into channels, forming 
our rivers, seas, lakes and fountains. Afterward they 
return to Tartarus by different courses, and form four 
large currents. The first is Acheron, whi3h, running 
through the desert, falls into a marsh, which is called 
Acherusian lake, the receptacle of all souls from their de- 
parture from the body, and which, after an appointed time, 
are sent back to earth to animate beasts. Between Acheron 
and the ocean runs a third river, called Phlegethon, which 
soon retires, falling into a vast gulf of fire forming a 



60 



HELL. 



lake largei than the ocean; thence running to the end of 
the Acherusian, it falls underneath Tartarus. The streams 
of this river, are seen ascending up to heaven in several 
places. The fourth river, Cocytus, falls first into a hor- 
rible marsh of blueish color, called the Stygian, making 
the formidable lake of Stya, which after descending into 
earth makes the Phlegethon in lake Acheron, and without 
mingling enters into Tartarus. When the dead arrive at 
the place where the demons leave them, they are all tried 
by judges, both those that lived justly and those that 
wallowed in impiety and injustice. Those who have lived 
neither entirely virtuously nor entirely viciously are sent 
to Acheron, where they embark in boats and are trans- 
ported to the Acherusian lake, where, suffering in propor- 
tion to their crimes, and cleansed from sin, they receive 
the recompense of their good actions. Those whose 
sins are incurable are hurled down Tartarus, where they 
are kept prisoners forever. Those guilty of curable sins are 
cast down into Tartarus, and after a year, the tides throw 
the homicides into Phlegethon, which draws them into the 
Acherusian lake, where they cry forever to those whom 
they have killed, and invoke them to permit them to 
pass the lake. If they prevail, they pass ; but if not, are 
thrown back into those rivers again until they have made 
satisfaction. Those who have distinguished themselves 
by a holy life, are released from those terrible prisons, 
and received above in the pure earth where they dwell; 
and those who are sufficiently purged by philosophy and 
live forever without their body, are received into more 
admirable and delicious mansions, which I can not de- 
scribe." — Phedon^ pp. 241, 246. 

This graphic description of the infernal geography, 
seems endorsed by Tertullian in the following language : 
" How shall I admire, how laugh, how exult, when 1 be- 
hold so many proud monarchs, so many fancied gods, 
groaning in the abyss of darkness, etc." — De Spectacw- 
lus, c. 30, 



CONCLUSION. 



61 



CONCLUSION. 

From the facts above stated I think it not difficult 
to educe the Apostles' creed (see Taylor's Diagesis, ch. 
11, p. 9), nor would it be more difficult from the body of 
Pagan Mythology and Philosophy to educe the theology 
of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Confession of Faith, 
and of every system of Christian divinity which the 
learning and ingenuity of the church have elaborated. 

If the fathers of the primitive church were unable ac- 
curately to define Christianity, what modern genius can 
attempt the same task without presumption ? If the ear- 
liest historians, the ablest orators, rhetoricians, theolo- 
gians, controversialists and writers that ornament the 
primitive church could distinguish no essental difference 
between Christianity and Paganism, how vain are the 
attempts of modern theologians, commentators, and bib- 
lical critics, to show the contrary ? In fine, if those 
who lived so near the age of the apostles as almost to 
have heard their retiring steps, who were born in their 
vicinity, spoke their language, visited the schools which 
they had planted, conversed with those with whom they 
had conversed, and had access to archives, records and 
libraries which have since, perished, were incompetent 
to establish an authoritative definition of Christianity, to 
what credit are entitled the attempts of modern ecclesi- 
astics, deprived of all these advantages, to furnish a 
more accurate definition ? Surely in showing that those 
from whom they received their creed were dupes of error, 
they invalidate the authority, if they do not disprove the 
truth, of Christianity itself. 



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